-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
On Feb 29 2004, kkrizka_z000z000z@... wrote:
> LD init/built-in.o
> LD .tmp_vmlinux1
> drivers/built-in.o(.text+0xd3a49): In function `splash_getraw':
> : undefined reference to `con2fb_map'
What about framebuffer support? Is that compiled into the kernel? Given the
function name it seems to me like that is the problem.
You also might want to try a make mrproper (but make sure to back up your
.config first!!!!) before trying to build the kernel again.
- --
() Michael Kjörling - michael@... - SM0YBY QTH JO89XI ^..^
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--- Karol Krizka <kkrizka_z000z000z@...> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am triing to add bootsplash to my computer running gentoo linux and
> the 2.6.3 kernel. I downloaded the patch from
My suggestion: forget these separate patches. Gentoo already has all you need.
Just enable
framebuffer, and use "genkernel" to compile your kernel. The "--bootsplash"
option to genkernel
generates the bootsplash. Also be sure to set "vga=791" in you grub.conf.
I had this setup, but had to disable framebuffer to run "rivatv".
genkernel is much better at compiling the kernel that the old method.
HTH
Ajay
>
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/people/stepan/bootsplash/kernel/bootsplash-3.1.4-2.6.3.di\
ff
> and applied it with 'patch -p1 < /root/bootsplash-3.1.4-2.6.3.diff '.
> It didn't give me any errors:
> patching file drivers/char/keyboard.c
> patching file drivers/char/n_tty.c
> patching file drivers/char/vt.c
> Hunk #1 succeeded at 3108 (offset -24 lines).
> patching file drivers/video/bootsplash/bootsplash.c
> patching file drivers/video/bootsplash/bootsplash.h
> patching file drivers/video/bootsplash/decode-jpg.c
> patching file drivers/video/bootsplash/decode-jpg.h
> patching file drivers/video/bootsplash/Kconfig
> patching file drivers/video/bootsplash/Makefile
> patching file drivers/video/bootsplash/render.c
> patching file drivers/video/console/fbcon.c
> patching file drivers/video/console/fbcon.h
> patching file drivers/video/Kconfig
> patching file drivers/video/Makefile
> patching file drivers/video/vesafb.c
> patching file include/linux/console_struct.h
> patching file include/linux/fb.h
> Hunk #1 succeeded at 470 (offset -36 lines).
> patching file kernel/panic.c
>
> I turned off Boot-Up Logo and turned on the Bootsplash. I checked for
> the other stuff that bootsplast said to, and they were on. I cound't
> find the "Use splash screen instead of boot logo", so I assumed that
> boot-up logo off and bootsplash on did that. When I tried to compile
> it with make, I get the following error:
> LD arch/i386/lib/built-in.o
> AS arch/i386/lib/checksum.o
> CC arch/i386/lib/dec_and_lock.o
> CC arch/i386/lib/delay.o
> AS arch/i386/lib/getuser.o
> CC arch/i386/lib/memcpy.o
> CC arch/i386/lib/strstr.o
> CC arch/i386/lib/usercopy.o
> AR arch/i386/lib/lib.a
> GEN .version
> CHK include/linux/compile.h
> UPD include/linux/compile.h
> CC init/version.o
> LD init/built-in.o
> LD .tmp_vmlinux1
> drivers/built-in.o(.text+0xd3a49): In function `splash_getraw':
> : undefined reference to `con2fb_map'
> drivers/built-in.o(.text+0xd4262): In function `splash_verbose':
> : undefined reference to `con2fb_map'
> drivers/built-in.o(.text+0xd4770): In function `splash_status':
> : undefined reference to `con2fb_map'
> drivers/built-in.o(.text+0xd48b0): In function `splash_read_proc':
> : undefined reference to `con2fb_map'
> drivers/built-in.o(.text+0xd4a97): In function `splash_write_proc':
> : undefined reference to `con2fb_map'
> make: *** [.tmp_vmlinux1] Error 1
>
> Anyone know what the problem is?
>
> Cheers,
> Karol Krizka
>
>
>
=====
Ajay Gautam
Linux User #252843 http://counter.li.org
root:$7$PtTXhqkQ$NRqKj5dfroE0z2Dj1GOaG.:0:0::/root:/bin/bash
__________________________________
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--- Ajay Gautam <ajaygautam@...> wrote:
>
> --- Karol Krizka <kkrizka_z000z000z@...> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I am triing to add bootsplash to my computer running gentoo linux and
> > the 2.6.3 kernel. I downloaded the patch from
>
> My suggestion: forget these separate patches. Gentoo already has all you need.
Just enable
> framebuffer, and use "genkernel" to compile your kernel. The "--bootsplash"
option to genkernel
> generates the bootsplash. Also be sure to set "vga=791" in you grub.conf.
>
> I had this setup, but had to disable framebuffer to run "rivatv".
>
> genkernel is much better at compiling the kernel that the old method.
Forgot to mention, genkernel runs "make mrproper", so save your .config file
somewhere, and pass
it genkernel using "--kernel-config" flag. Here is my last genkernel command:
genkernel --kernel-config=/usr/src/linux/config-from-2.6.3-r1 --bootsplash all
HTH
Ajay
>
> HTH
>
> Ajay
>
> >
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/people/stepan/bootsplash/kernel/bootsplash-3.1.4-2.6.3.di\
ff
> > and applied it with 'patch -p1 < /root/bootsplash-3.1.4-2.6.3.diff '.
> > It didn't give me any errors:
> > patching file drivers/char/keyboard.c
> > patching file drivers/char/n_tty.c
> > patching file drivers/char/vt.c
> > Hunk #1 succeeded at 3108 (offset -24 lines).
> > patching file drivers/video/bootsplash/bootsplash.c
> > patching file drivers/video/bootsplash/bootsplash.h
> > patching file drivers/video/bootsplash/decode-jpg.c
> > patching file drivers/video/bootsplash/decode-jpg.h
> > patching file drivers/video/bootsplash/Kconfig
> > patching file drivers/video/bootsplash/Makefile
> > patching file drivers/video/bootsplash/render.c
> > patching file drivers/video/console/fbcon.c
> > patching file drivers/video/console/fbcon.h
> > patching file drivers/video/Kconfig
> > patching file drivers/video/Makefile
> > patching file drivers/video/vesafb.c
> > patching file include/linux/console_struct.h
> > patching file include/linux/fb.h
> > Hunk #1 succeeded at 470 (offset -36 lines).
> > patching file kernel/panic.c
> >
> > I turned off Boot-Up Logo and turned on the Bootsplash. I checked for
> > the other stuff that bootsplast said to, and they were on. I cound't
> > find the "Use splash screen instead of boot logo", so I assumed that
> > boot-up logo off and bootsplash on did that. When I tried to compile
> > it with make, I get the following error:
> > LD arch/i386/lib/built-in.o
> > AS arch/i386/lib/checksum.o
> > CC arch/i386/lib/dec_and_lock.o
> > CC arch/i386/lib/delay.o
> > AS arch/i386/lib/getuser.o
> > CC arch/i386/lib/memcpy.o
> > CC arch/i386/lib/strstr.o
> > CC arch/i386/lib/usercopy.o
> > AR arch/i386/lib/lib.a
> > GEN .version
> > CHK include/linux/compile.h
> > UPD include/linux/compile.h
> > CC init/version.o
> > LD init/built-in.o
> > LD .tmp_vmlinux1
> > drivers/built-in.o(.text+0xd3a49): In function `splash_getraw':
> > : undefined reference to `con2fb_map'
> > drivers/built-in.o(.text+0xd4262): In function `splash_verbose':
> > : undefined reference to `con2fb_map'
> > drivers/built-in.o(.text+0xd4770): In function `splash_status':
> > : undefined reference to `con2fb_map'
> > drivers/built-in.o(.text+0xd48b0): In function `splash_read_proc':
> > : undefined reference to `con2fb_map'
> > drivers/built-in.o(.text+0xd4a97): In function `splash_write_proc':
> > : undefined reference to `con2fb_map'
> > make: *** [.tmp_vmlinux1] Error 1
> >
> > Anyone know what the problem is?
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Karol Krizka
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> =====
> Ajay Gautam
> Linux User #252843 http://counter.li.org
> root:$7$PtTXhqkQ$NRqKj5dfroE0z2Dj1GOaG.:0:0::/root:/bin/bash
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Get better spam protection with Yahoo! Mail.
> http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools
>
=====
Ajay Gautam
Linux User #252843 http://counter.li.org
root:$7$PtTXhqkQ$NRqKj5dfroE0z2Dj1GOaG.:0:0::/root:/bin/bash
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Newbie's Top Ten Commands
________________________________________________________________________
This is it, the Moment all you newbies have been waiting for, this is
the list of the top ten commands that every new linux user should learn
about to save time, effort and usenet flames. It is not intended to be a
full description of the commands, rather it is a guide to the power of
Gnu/Linux with some immediately accessible examples to try out
(something that most technical documents omit, but which I believe are
essential in getting the ideas involved into virgin skulls).
I want to get two things clear from the start.
First......Where the hell do you USE all these commands....
We use them in a terminal sometimes called a console. You may think of
them as DOS-boxes with attitude. Linux is well specified with terminals
There are at least five different ones on most distro's. The easiest to
get to are the ones from KDE and Gnome as these both have icons on the
"taskbar" in their respective environments. My personal choice is Eterm
at the minute, as it is fast to open and has very pretty background
pictures:). They all do the same job, just play about until you find
your "flavour". You can also use these commands in the non-gui runlevels
or in the "Virtual consoles" that you can access by pressing
control-alt- and F1-F6
Second......Why the hell you should bother.Or... "it's not the 1970's
maaaaan"?.
Easy, all computers work faster when run from a commandline....even
Windows!!. In truth, the nice mouse driven gui's you may be used to are
nothing more than the curtain behind which the little old chap sat in
"The Wizzard of Oz". This is even true in MS OS's, when you click a
button, it sends a command to a program, nothing more The main
difference with Linux is that none of the functions are hidden in
obscure dll's or the regis...ugh...regi....that THING that IT uses. I
will race any man, woman or small furry creature from alpha-centauri,
with a mouse against me with my keyboard, in ANY OS!. ( I must admit to
an unfair advantage owing to having no mouse on my Atari STe for three
years, during which time it gigged it's little ass off in dark vibrating
rooms.) Please don't think that the commandline in Linux means it is
somehow antiquated, nothing could be more false, always remember the
"Curtain" I mentioned.
Or perhaps a better way of putting it is " Switch off your mouse, reach
out with your feelings, use the force":)
Now, in the tradition of top ten chart run-downs the world over, we are
going to do this in reverse order, starting with the least useful (or
rather least MOST useful) command and working up to the "Big Guns". Each
command will come with at least one decent example of what you can do
with it, with many of them however, there are many more functions than
those I will discuss. So here we go (begin playback of chart rundown
music appropriate to your nation)...............
Number 10. ls
Number 9. tar
Number 8. permissions suite
Number 7. RPM
Number 6. locate
Number 5. grep
Number 4. cat
Number 3. pico/nano
Number 2. man
Number 1. apropos
________________________________________________________________________
No: 10......ls...........And friends
I like to think of ls as being short for "list" whether it is or not,
it is a good way of remembering its function. It is roughly equivalent
to Dos' dir command, but with a few more clever functions. To obtain a
directory listing, just type ls. To obtain a listing for a directory
other than the current one, just type (for example) ls /etc; this will
show you the contents of "/etc" (where most Global config files live).
To see more info about the files you can use the -l (for Long) option
thus... ls -l will show you the contents of the current directory in
more detail, including the owner, group, permissions and (if it is a
Symlink) the file to which it points. Hidden files may be shown with the
-a option (always worth trying if you are sure that a certain
configuration file ought to be there but you can't see it).
ls can also be used to see a listing of all the directories contained in
the current one (subdirectories) by using ls -d */ and in a mandrake
distributed Linux, you will find that some kind soul has put in an alias
for this that enables you to enter merely lsd (an old hippie me-thinks).
To GET to one of the directories you have just listed the contents off
you can use cd. cd in Linux is, again, similar to DOS. You can specify a
relative or absolute path. Err what..? Easy let's say you are in your
home directory: "/home/newbie" and you want to look in your "News"
directory. You can use either cd ./News (the "./" in front means 'start
in this directory'), or just cd News as the cd command defaults to
looking in the current directory for the one you asked it to change to .
Now suppose you wanted to get to "/etc", well you could type cd
../../etc (the ".." means 'up one level', just like it does in DOS.
However, you can also specify an "absolute path", meaning one that
starts from the "/" or "root" directory. You do this by starting the
directory with / like this: cd /etc and to get back to your home
directory: cd /home/newbie ( Neat trick: cd ~ takes you there too and
you can use ~ just about anywhere when you mean your home directory) .
By default you will generally see only the name of the directory you are
in at your prompt. To see the full path of that directory, use pwd which
stands for "Print Working Directory" and is good for those "OK, where
the hell am I?" moments. That just about covers what you NEED to know
about cd, now back to ls.
The output of ls can be long to say the least and can be something of a
nightmare to follow as it spits up the page. Let us welcome the twins
less and more , these are actually two little programs that are fairly
synonymous with one another, well enough so that the new user should
just be able to use which ever one he/she thinks looks better. Their
function?...to pause the stream if stuff flying out of ls (or any other
command that throws megagobs of information at you) at the end of each
page by saying......well, "more?". Hitting any key will advance a line
and hitting space will advance 1 page. You can abort by pressing the "Q"
key. Ahh, I hear you cry, how do I get this more thing to show me my
directory? Well, welcome to the "pipe" symbol | and with it, some of the
real power of Linux. You see, the underlying philosophy here is to build
complex processes from small, easily understood ones, and piping is the
key to doing this. The | symbol stuck between two commands takes the
output of one and gives (pipes) it to the other. So, to get a nice
pausing directory display you pipe ls to more like so: ls | more of
course you can use all your ls options as well: ls -la | more is cool
too. If the fancy takes you, you can also use less instead of more.
________________________________________________________________________
No: 9......tar..............plus supporting features.
So what is this tar thing you all hear about? Well the name is short for
Tape ARchive, "oh how relevant to my desktop {NOT}" I hear you say; well
you may be surprised. tar comes from an age before "zipping" when the
best way to compress several files was to build them into one, thereby
saving on the disc space used in all those files. Although the amount of
data stays the same, much space and file system strain is saved this
way, for reasons that....well for reasons you can damned well go and
find out for yourselves; what am I, a history professor eh? EH? :¬P.
Also it was good to keep the backups in a single file called "unflog" or
something, for retrieval purposes. The command is really designed to
work on directories (it can be used to pick up specific files though).
In general, extracting the contents of a ".tar" file will produce a
directory of the same or similar name to the original file.
Ahh, but what are these ".tar.gz" files? Well as computers got bigger
and file sizes got silly, serious compression became necessary for good
archiving, enter gzip. Essentially this does the same job as "WinZip or
"Pkzip" (there other Linux compression programs, but we will stick with
gzip as it is the one you are most likely to come across). It squashes
files by a system not unlike the following: "Lets take a file that holds
"000000000000000", now that takes up 15 bytes of space. However I can
say "15 0's" in 4 bytes: (1, 5, space, 0....ignoring the 's as it is
only there to make it read right for you)". In practice this method used
comes under the heading of "Scary Maths", but the idea is the same. A
".tar.gz" file is a ".tar" file that has been passed through gzip to
shrink it. Alright, lets get down to business, how do you extract one of
these things..?
Quick and dirty solution coming up. Change into the directory containing
the victim, err, I mean file. now issue the command tar -xzvf
./foo.tar.gz. The options are: x(extract), z(use gzip to unzip), v(be
verbose, we want it to tell us if it fell over, not keep the info to
itself) and f(Use the specified filename, perhaps a hangover from it's
tape heitage). The ./ is not strictly needed, but it is always good
practice to use it when dealing with the correct directory, until you
get it into your head for running programs when it IS required to run
one in the current dir. Now in the current directory you should now see
a new directory created from the ".tar" file, cd into it and there are
your extracted files. Very often these will be the "sources" for a
program and will require you to compile them. I have included a bluffers
guide to compiling lower down on this page.
Of course, you can use tar and gzip to make a new "tar.gz" file (or
"tarball" as they're often called). Let's say you wanted to make a
complete backup of your home directory so you can restore it if whatever
disastrous tweak you are contemplating goes hideously wrong. Here is the
command for it: tar -cvfz ./backup.tar.gz /home/newbie/ reading this
from left to right the options (or arguments)...the letters after the
"-" are, in plain language. c - Create the file I specify
(./backup.tar.gz), v - tell me what you are doing, f - don't argue, z -
and then zip it please. You may need to be root to do this as some
configuration files in your home directory may belong to root. This will
create a nice shiny new tarball with your home directory in it, in the
current directory (see the ./ before backup.tar.gz), it is up to you
where that is. Note: Another reason you may have to be root to do this
procedure is that users may not have access to the directory you are
trying to make the archive in.
That about covers the basic, "get-you-up-and-running" features of tar
but believe me when I say there are a LOT more options!
________________________________________________________________________
No: 8......The access and permissions commands
The WHAT? Well unlike a certain other "OS", Linux has a feature called
"security". This means that many users can live happily on one machine
without ever treading on the toes of another user or on the system
itself. To achieve this, it uses a system of "permissions", which are
just what they sound like. In all honesty these can cause more newbie
upsets than anything else. They can also lead to one of the most common
and readily available ways to hose (destroy) a perfectly good system
(ie: logging in as "root").
So, what do these permissions look like? If you recall from our little
journey into the realm of ls, you can see the permissions for files by
typing ls -l (l is for "long", remember). To the left of the directory
listing you will see a 10 character readout of the permissions. It looks
a little like this -rwxr--r--, yeah wow, that's helpful! OK maybe not,
so lets look at the breakdown....
The first column we ignore (it is a special column that contains certain
other flags about a file, for instance a directory will have a d here.
So, we are down to nine, well that nine are actually 3 sets of 3. Lets
look at the first set of 3: rwx these mean the file has read, write and
executable permissions set, meaning (rocket science bit) that it can be
read, written to (ie: modified) and run as a program or shell script
(executable).
OK, that makes sense (doesn't it?), but why the other 6 and what is a -?
Well the first 3 we have looked at are the permissions for the file's
"owner", that being the person who created it. The next 3 are the
permissions for that person's "group" and the 3rd lot are for the rest
of us, or the "world" as Linux calls us. So a group is..? A group is,
well, a group, for instance if you were working on a large network, as
part of a project developement team, your group would be the other
members of your team, and you may want them to be able to share files
with you. Groups are not as vital on a stand alone desktop machine as on
a large network, but the system still uses them to determine certain
things like who gets to hear sound ( ie: the "audio" group) or play with
the CD-ReWriter. This brings us to "-", this simply means that the
permission is not set. So if we return to our example we now know that
this file can be read, written and run by it's owner and that both the
members of his group and the rest of the world can read it but nothing
else. The file's owner and group name are also listed by ls -l.
As you can see it is easy to keep a file totally private, by merely
setting it's permissions to -rwx------ . Err how do you change them? Let
us welcome the chmod command to the party. The file's owner can use this
to change the permissions on the file, "root" can also change any file
on the system (keep repeating, "root=God@localhost"). So how exactly is
this wonderous miracle of security achieved? Well there are 2 syntaxes
(or is that syntaxen or syntae or...shuddup!), you can use to talk to
this command, and they can both be obscure to the newbie. I don't want
to get too deeply into it, so I will demonstrate a couple of the most
common uses. First and most common is getting a file to become
executable. This may sound odd, but many "runable" files, especially
shell scripts may arrive in your posession from a variety of sources
with the execute permission turned off. So what do you do? Well, adding
a single permission to a file is easy, say you have a game demo that
contains a file called "runme.sh" that wont run, we would type: (in the
same directory as the file) chmod +x ./runme.sh this should add an
executable permission for everyone (owner, group and world).
However, this is a little brutal, and we need a more targeted way to do
this. This is where the first set of options for the chmod command come
in (err, first set?...yup, those that come before the +/- rwx ones).
These specify, who you are making the change for either u(ser, the
owner), g(roup), o(ther, or world) and a(ll). So if we wanted to make
"foo.txt" group writable for instance, we would issue: (from the
directory containing the file) chmod g+w ./foo.txt. The general format
in english is "chmod who +/- what" and if you leave the "who" part empty
you get user, group and world, all set to whatever the "what" part
specifies. Now, above I mentioned that some chmod operations require you
to be "root" (for instance changing permissions on a file that belongs
to a user other than yourself, or on a system file. Now you could logout
and then log back in as root, but that would quickly get on your nerves,
so the great elders bestowed the su command on us. With parameters
added, su lets you become another user: su username , but on its own it
means, "I wanna be ROOT!". In either case you will need to know the
password for the username you wish to become, including "root". This
applies for anything that says "permission denied" and for some that say
"command not found" (some commands, like updatedb or reboot, live in the
directory "/sbin", which is only part of root's path). As a rule, when
told to clear off by the shell, become "root" and see if that scares it
into submission.
But, why dont I just login as root all the time? A million good reasons
but I will give you two: 1. If you are on the internet as root, your
system is much more open to attacks. 2. If you aren't root you cannot
hose your system. OK I am going to say that again only louder, If you
are not root, you can NOT hose your system! You can blow 7 shades of
sh** out of your user account and render it dead or at least very sick
indeed (this is when the home dir tarball made earlier comes in handy).
But if you login as a different user, all will be well. Login as "root"
and screw up, and well, it could be a sad day for you. So keep saying,
"Do I need to be root to do this?", if not, dont!!
There is one other important command in this suite that you should know
and that is chown or "change owner". Bit of a no-brainer actually, you
can figure it out on your own as a little challenge (don't be root when
you do in case you mess up and change ownership on the wrong thing). It
is unlikely you will need it much, but sometimes it comes in handy to
convert a program or script that someone else gave you, to be your own.
________________________________________________________________________
No: 7......RPM
What exactly IS this "rpm" thing you keep seeing? RPM is short for
Redhat Package manager, and is a package management system developed by
Red Hat. (It does exactly what it says on the tin!). RPM keeps track of
the software installed on your machine so that versions don't conflict
amongst other things. A ".rpm" file then is the "ammunition" for the
weapon and will typically contain a bunch of files, an install script
that can be used by the rpm program, a list of dependencies (other files
or packages that are required in order for this one to work correctly)
and an uninstall script. You could think of it as a GOOD version of the
"Installshield" system you may be familliar with from Windows. The main
difference is that the full range of the system's capabilities are
available to the end user rather than just the developer who built the
package.
The things that RPM can do are fairly terrifying, but thankfully, as
with many Linux commands, there are a few simple everyday things it can
do that are damned useful. But why do I want to use the silly command
line version when I have this nice shiny package manager application?
Well there are just so many more fun things to do, so here goes. Want to
install a package? Get yourself into the directory that contains the
".rpm" file and type: rpm -Uvh --test foo.rpm translation: U=upgrade
(now you can use -i if you KNOW there is no version of the package
already installed, but heck U will work too so I just always use it,
since you can't go wrong), v=verbose (rpm is pretty tight lipped even
with this turned on), h=hashes (makes a nice line of hashes ####, to
tell you how it is getting on, requires v I think) and finally --test
means "do a run-through of this procedure and tell me if it looks
alright", similar to the "dummy-run" mode on CD burning software, but
much less likely to cause a seizure in the user who turns it on by
accident (if I had a penny for every 25 mins I have wasted waiting on a
message that says "well if I HAD burned the CD it would have been cool",
I would buy a faster roaster, but I ramble...).
Anyway --test will tell you if there are any dependencies you need to
satisfy for the package as well as any other potential hassles. The
single coolest thing about --test (and DO pay attention here 007!), is
that you can "batch test" a whole directory full of rpms. This comes in
handy when trying to upgrade a major component like KDE or XFree86.
Without the ability to issue rpm -Uvh --test ./*.rpm any normal human
being WILL lose their minds trying to work out whether anything external
is needed, it is hard to explain, but trust me, this little gem will
keep you sane. As will the fact that once you have tested them all you
can drop the --test bit and just type rpm -Uvh ./*.rpm again this will
do them all at once thereby saving the user having to figure out the
correct installation order (the same thing is also to be done for the
single rpm we first mentioned, removing --test will do the actual
install).
Right, so what about removing rpms, dead easy: rpm -e packagename. Or
what about finding out if a certain package is installed and if so, what
version: rpm -q packagename. It may help if you think of -e as erase and
-q as query (well that is what they mean anyway). Of course the rpm
manager built into your distribution will understand your install CD's
and will be able to satisfy dependencies from them. I would recommend
that if you are looking for a package you use "rpmdrake" (or whatever
your distro uses) to search the install CD's, before you run off to
rpmfind and "going manual". Even if you do always get lucky, there is
one rpm option you should burn into your brain: rpm --rebuilddb which
pretty much translates to "unflog whatever has gone wrong with the rpm
database" and is ALWAYS worth a shot when the rpm functions on your
system start messing you about.
You will see two other options for rpm in a lot of discussions, --force
and --nodeps. Don't use them, they are for the most part, best
translated as "please flog my rpm database and/or system beyond all
reason". The first --nodeps means "to hell with what it thinks it needs,
install it anyway" and is, IMHO, asking for trouble. The second, --force
has it's uses, like when you know that rpm is lying to you about
something. Example, rpm wont let you install a package because it claims
it is already installed, the package is either broken or half missing,
then you can use --force to install it (rpm -Uvh --force packagename)
but on the whole it should be considered a Bad Thing and avoided.
This is barely a scratching of the surface of this command's
capabilities, but for now it is all you NEED to know.
________________________________________________________________________
No: 6......locate............and chums.
Blindingly obvious Linux command alert! In keeping with Linux tradition,
this is one of those commands you wouldn't guess because it is just too
damned obvious. Want to know where "Foo" is hanging out these days?
Easy: locate Foo . This will return anything that contains "Foo" in
either the file or directory name, AND it will do it instantly. This bit
of magic is down to it's "other half": updatedb which, when run as root
will make a database of every file on your machine. It can take a little
while (5-20 minutes in my experience, depending on the complexity of the
file system) so it is usually run by a Daemon in the "wee small hours of
the morning", typically 4am, if the machine is down at this time,
another Daemon "anacron" will attempt to run it when you do boot up.
Obviously if you wish to find a very new file, you may want to run
updatedb "by hand". No options, just: updatedb as root.
You may think that this is pretty stunning technology, but wait, there
is more. Want to know where the essential executable of a program is
(along with it's manual and source if installed)? Just type: whereis
Foo. Now that is a useful command, do not forget it. If you only want to
see where the executable is, try: which Foo. You are, by now starting to
see that we are not in Kansas any more Toto, right?
As if this little lot wasn't enough there is also the find command. This
is a little trickier than the point and click one you may have used in
the other "OS" but believe me when I say that it shames it in terms of
speed and power. find comes into it's own when you want to find stuff by
more than just name (although it will happily search by name too). Let's
say you've just downloaded a really big file, say 50MB (QNX 6.1?), and
you know it is in the mess that is your home directory; somewhere but
not exactly where. Try this: find /home/newbie -size +45000K . Now I
really don't want to go into too much depth about find as it's functions
quickly head off towards the bizarre, but trust me when I say that the
next time you are looking for a file on your windows box you will
probably boot it into linux to do the searching. I would say that a file
would be hard pushed to hide from you now, eh? Just remember that linux
is case sensitive (ie: "woRd"is not the same as "word") and you will be
fine.
________________________________________________________________________
No: 5......grep
This is the command I have least been looking forward to. Everyone is
entitled to blindness in some area, well for me it is grep. Hopefully by
having to explain it here I will gain more understanding myself. There
are a few conflicting definitions of what grep means but I shall furnish
you with my incorrect, homebrewed definition. I say it means "get
regular expression". I was reluctant to include the command as it is one
of the least apparently useful in the list. However, appearances can be
very deceptive indeed and a mastery of grep will lead the user on to
higher things. This is basically because of the "regular expressions"
used by grep, these are the key to a whole range of things in Linux,
from file searching to programming and system set up.
"OK, OK! Enough!! What are they? If you are a tragic soul who has
studied database design then the idea of looking for things by using
oddly phrased questions will be familliar to you. That is what a regular
expression is; a way of translating your request for something into a
form that something as un-intelligent as a computer can't mess up. It is
best if we stick to examples I feel, as explaining the ins and outs of
concept is a bit much for a short work like this. OK so we have a
directory full of letters (saved as ".txt" files), and we want to find
all the ones that are on the subject of Windows. We could use grep
"crash" ./*.txt instantly you have an answer showing every occurence of
"crash" in all your ".txt" files and also showing which file each was
in, and a short quotation to put it in context. This is the very tip of
the iceberg. Grep's options are powerful in the extreme....learn to
decode this little lot in your sleep and "strong will you be in the
force young skywalker" . I want you to think about how useful grep can
be when combined with some other commands, using pipes.
.
If anyone out there can write a less gibbering account of grep, please
mail it to me and I will include it along with a credit of course.
________________________________________________________________________
No: 4......cat
cat, or "concatenate" is a marvellous little toy and can be used for
everything from showing a text file on the screen to making an iso image
from a CD. Neat huh? To start then, let's say we have a "readme" file,
you can open it in you favourite text editor (more on those next), OR
use cat: cat ./readme there you go. Of course it shot up the screen so
fast that you couldn't read it so, remember more and less: cat ./readme
| more This pipes the output of cat ./readme into more. cat can also be
used to join files. Say we want to add two files into one we would use:
cat file1 file2 > newfile. Hold up!!, what's this > thing all about
then? Well it is one of Linux's key features, it is called a
"re-direct". See, if we just ran: cat file1 file2 we would just get the
contents of both files whizzing past on the screen, because the screen
is the standard place to put such stuff. The correct name being standard
out or STDOUT for short. However, if we were to do this: cat file1
file2>file3 The contents of "file1" and "file2" will both be copied to
"file3"
Essentially all Linux programs have a "standard out" (they also have a
"standard in" that can be read from, and a "standard error" output as
well, that is usually to the screen but can also be re-directed). One of
the coolest things I found to do with this was to catalogue CD's. Pop a
CD in the drive and type: tree /mnt/cdrom > cd1.txt this will take a
nice directory listing of the CD and save it in the file "cd1.txt". Now
put another CD in and repeat but using "cd2.txt", repeat until all your
CD's are done. Now, in the directory with all the ".txt" files do: cat
./cd*.txt > masterlist.txt and there you have a nice CD catalogue. Neat
trick huh? I don't want to dwell too long on the standard ins and outs,
but commit this fact to memory: "All Linux programs can be thought of as
being like a Hi-Fi component, they get their "signal" (ie: the data to
work with) from "STDIN" (usually the keyboard, but can be a file, like
this: command < filename , which would present command with filename as
it's input) and after processing, the output is to "STDOUT" (usually the
screen), just like any part of your Hi-Fi they can be "re-wired" so that
other inputs and outputs are used".
In a Hi-Fi one may re-wire the output of the CD Player so that it goes
to the cassette machine rather than the amplifier. In a Linux program
one can make it's output go to, well just about anywhere, including the
great big bit bucket in the sky: /dev/null anything sent here ceases to
exist). This may all seem a little overwhelming but I can assure you
that it isn't as hard as you might think, and anyway the important thing
is that you get the idea of these things into your head now, as you
never know when you may suddenly feel the need to use them.
One excellent use for both cat and redirection is in making ISO CD
images. Now one can fool about for a while with various tools trying to
make an ISO from a CD (which you would do in order to mount the image as
a filesystem, ie: the file on your HD will be treated as a real CD to
all intents and purposes, cool eh?. If you wanted to make multiple
copies of Linux for your friends without inconveniencing your master
CD's). But in the end the simplest method is simply cat /dev/cdrom>
image.iso. Now compare that to loading up a great big advert sponsored
app in Windows to do the same job, most mighty I think you will agree.
One more thing, cat doesn't care about filetypes and can work with any
file you may have. Just today I found that the Frank Zappa concert I had
ripped with "cdparanoia" (a most cool proggy) and encoded with
"bladeenc" (also cool), was pretty bad because of all the track markers
breaking up what should be a continuous tune. No problem, a quick cd
into the directory with all the mp3s and then cat ./*.mp3
>./wholegig.mp3 and all is well again!
cat, STDOUT, STDIN and STDERR (and tree which allows you to send
something two ways!) are on the same level as "real-world" screwdrivers
and spanners (US = Wrenches). They are key tools for working with other
commands, and a full list of their uses would be larger than this entire
document, but for now you know about them and you will, I am sure, find
them useful in ways I haven't even guessed at. Here, the concept is the
important thing, play about!!.
________________________________________________________________________
No: 3......pico/nano
As you get into Linux you will quickly find that the quickest way to
make a configuration change is to get in "under the hood" and do it "by
hand". It is often much easier and faster to just edit the appropriate
configuration file, you will also notice that much of the advice you
will receive on usenet is geared towards this "get-your-hands-dirty
approach", mainly because such methods are less specific to the
particular system. For instance not everyone has Gnome installed and
therefore not everyone has access to the Linuxconf graphical
configuration tools. But everyone DOES have the files that those tools
edit.
Now to edit these files we need an editor (startling conclusion that!).
There are two main text editing tools available for *nix systems, vi and
emacs. We shall use.....neither! Why on earth would we do this you say?
The answer is two-fold. Firstly, although both these tools are immensely
powerful, neither is anything like intuitive enough for the newbie to
use straight away, I mean, there isn't much incentive to get editing if
you have to spend a lot of time working out the editor itself (at least
for now). The second reason is one of religion, the "holy war" between
those loyal to vi and emacs is a computing legend and is not something a
newbie wants to get into I assure you!
So we are going to use pico or nano. Pico is the text editing tool that
is packaged with the pine email program that is included on the Mandrake
distribution CD's (along with many other distro's). Nano is a standalone
clone of pico that has one or two cool extras like find-and-replace, but
from now on we will refer to only pico, as this is probably already on
your cd's (although if your modem can stretch to a 400k download (sucks
air through teeth at the vastness), I would grab nano).
OK, wassit do then?. Pico is IMHO the most intuitive and newbie-proof
(read as, "less likely to cause hair-loss"), text editor around. You can
use it to inflict all manner of insane and inept mistakes upon your poor
system, thereforee pico is good:). This is an important thing to
understand, hosing your system is good! Here's why, if you mess up with
a graphical config tool, it might be game over (for someone
inexperienced, gurus can do miracles). On the other hand, if you foul up
when directly editing a file then you can restore your backup and
continue. And in doing so you will have learned:)
VITAL KNOWLEDGE: Before ploughing into some important system file like a
madman, BACK IT UP!! Witness the following as an example: to safely fool
about with /etc/fstab, perform the following using the cp (copy)
command: cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.saveass or perhaps: cp /etc/fstab
/etc/fstab.unflog . Some people would advise the use of ".old" or ".bak"
as a good way of labelling your backups, but my names are more
descriptive, and sillier:). Also note that double extensions are fine in
Linux, you can rename "modules.conf" to "modules.conf.unflog". Now if
you blow it all up, you can delete the broken file using rm (for
remove): rm /etc/fstab and reverse the cp command you used above (cp
/etc/fstab.unflog /etc/fstab), and you're back in business!
Now we can continue, safe in the knowledge we can save our backsides if
needed. When you need to hack at a file, be it a system configuration
file or a little note to the milkman, just type pico filename (remember
the ./ convention to use files in the current directory). If filename
does not exist pico will open a new file with the name you specify.
Pico's interface is good for the new user because it's commands are
shown along the bottom of the screen. The "^" character beside the
letters means the "Control" (CTRL) key, so ^o means press "Control" and
"o" together -aka "CTRL+o" (you will notice that ^o is labelled as
"write out", this is pico-speak for "save"). From here I figure you can
manage it on your own, as the rest of the options available to you will
be either obvious and/or familliar to anyone who ever used any text
editor ever. Of course once you are bored with pico you can join in the
Holy Wars and choose your side:)
________________________________________________________________________
No: 2......man
Now if anything in this Newbie Top Ten is going to get me flamed by my
elders and betters, then it is the bare fact that I have put man at
Number.2. Many people would say it is THE most important command on your
system, and while it IS for the more experienced newbie (newbie 2nd
class), I think my choice for Number.1 is better. So, man is..?
man is man(ual page). Virtually every command on your box has a man
page, as do some of the large apps. Just type man commandname and sit
back in wonder as the world is revealed. Man pages can be a little
daunting at first, but do read them, after you have read a few you will
get the idea of how they work. As a practice, go back to the top of this
list and go through each command mentioned and look at it's man page,
try and see how the options and methods for the commands that have been
explored here, are described in the man page, you will be a guru in no
time. Oh and don't forget man man :) Some programs also have an info
page that one can get with info commandname Not a lot else to say about
it, just get reading.
________________________________________________________________________
No: 1.......apropos
As indicated above I think this command is more important to the new
user than man. The main reason being that one of the most common cries
of the newbie is "How the hell do I..?" apropos translates as "How the
hell do I..?". All you have to do is type: apropos subject. Sometimes
the results can be a little over-zealous and contain references to
various libraries that pertain to the subject, this can be a bit scary
to the newbie, but is essential for more advanced users and especially
developers. This command is your friend. A story: A while ago I was
wondering how to record sounds to my HD, I downloaded several half-baked
applications for the purpose with limited success. On a whim I tried
apropos and looked for "record", I discovered that Linux has a command
rec for this very purpose. Could have saved much hassle and embarrassing
Usenet posts if I had just done this earlier. Remember this tale of
caution. There isn't a lot more to say about this one either really,
although you could try man apropos:)
________________________________________________________________________
The Bulffer's guide to compiling from source.
________________________________________________________________________
What is compiling?......Taking the code that a program was written in
and tunring it into a runable program.
Why would I do it , what are that advantages?......When you get a
pre-compiled program ( like all windows software and most RPMS) You get
a version that is compiled to run on a huge array of systems, with
support for all of them built in, or the code optimised to a "lowest
common denominator" version of itself that may not be very quick but
won't offend too many systems either. However. when you compile your own
programs from source, the first stage of the process literally asks "
Right where am I and what do I need to do my job here", So you end up
with a smaller program, tailor made for your system.
So, how is it done? Once you have unpacked your .tar.gz with the source
in it, enter the directory the unpacking created. You should Always read
the readme file to make sure you don't mess up. But the general
procedure is as follows.
./configure: this is a script that will take a look at your system,
sometimes it may ask you some questions. The results of this are used to
make appropriate changes in the sources and the makefile which is used
by the next stage.
make: this bit actually builds the program into an executable form (
often referred to as a binary). This is done in accordance with the info
supplied during the "./configure" stage. Now for some programs, this
will be all you do, and you will have the finished product somewhere
inside the current directory or a sub-directory of it. In this case just
copy it into your /usr/bin directory. Since this directory is part of
your default PATH ( the list of directories Linux will look in for a
command you type), you can run it by merely typing it's filename into a
terminal or your desktop's command prompt. Some other packages, however,
have more than just a binary program file, they may compile some custom
libraries or need to make some minor adjustments to the system's
configuration. These packages have a third stage to the compilation
process.
make install: This phase will copy the program file, and any libraries
or other miscellaneous baggage, to their final appropriate resting
places. It may also make a few small changes to some system
configuration options, CHECK THE README!!!!!.
Some packages you download may have other stages or totally different
ones, that you will need to read the documentaion for but the above
three steps are by far the most common and it is important that you know
what they actually are.
When computers attack!!!! Or...Common compiling problems. You may be
told that make cannot be found, just install it from you CD's, it is
just a command like any other. Another error you will often get, is that
it can't find a compiler. Ensure gcc is installed, this is also on your
CD's. There may be other compilers that some packages may want, but this
is very rare. Another common newbie-stopper is that you get aparrently
incorrect dependency problems. For instance you may be told that the
compile process cannot find a part of XFree86 even though you have it
installed. The deal here is that the compilation process is looking for
bits of X to compile into itself or to get info from. Very often all you
need to do is go to your CD's and install missingpackagename-devel.rpm
the -devel is ( I assume) short for developer, this file will more than
likely contain the stuff you need. And if in doubt there is always
rpmfind or "sanctuary" as i call it.
________________________________________________________________________
The Mighty shell script
Start with a DOS .bat file and then add the ability to perform ANY
function of the OS, and you are getting the idea. Basically if you ever
find you have a lot of stuff you need to type over and over again, stick
it in a shell script and you are laughing....Example....Lets say you
want to backup your home and /etc directories: rattle the following into
your text editor of choice......
#/bin/bash
#In the first line above the # has a special meaning
#that being to let the system know that this is a script
#to be run on the bash shell that is probably your default one
#but on all other lines
#starting a line with # means
#ignore this line
#very useful for putting in comments like this
#make ourselves a new directory to work in
mkdir /tmp/backups
#copy the files we wish to backup to the new directory
#the options used in the cp command are
#r -recursive -descend into sub-directories
#p -preserve permissions -essential for a good backup as
#normally the cp command makes everything belong to whoever ran it
#v -verbose -log all activity to the screen -good for spotting errors
#but much better for showing off:)
#f -force -don't argue about little things ( note..silly things includes
# overwriting existing files...good here...bad at other times. be
careful)
cp -rpvf /etc/ /tmp/backups
#remember to change /home/newbie to the right username
cp -rpvf /home/newbie /tmp/backups
#tar 'em up
tar -cvzf /tmp/saveass.tar.gz /tmp/backups
#get rid of the copies we made now that we have them tar'ed
#the options on rm ( ReMove) are...
#r -recursive same as for cp
#f -force, don't ask for confirmation, just delete it
rm -rf /tmp/backups
echo your new backup file is complete....it is /tmp/saveass.tar.gz
echo please place it somewhere nice and safe like a CDR
echo CONGRATULATIONS!!!! you are now a hacker cadet
exit
OK, very nice now what do you DO with it. firstly save it as let's say
backmeup.sh/ The .sh isn't needed but it helps to remind you it is a
shell script. Then make it executable by using chmod ( see above ). Now
put it somewhere in your PATH -the directories Linux will look in for
any command you type. ( type echo $PATH to see what directories are
included). I reccommend you place it in /sbin because that directory is
only in Root's path and a procedure like this is really a job for
Root.Naturally, you will need to be root to cp the file into /sbin.
Now all you have to do to back up pretty much all your crucial settings
is su to root and type backmeup.sh. It would be best to have some
friends round to show off the whizzing text to:)
So in future instead of typing out the same old command sequences over
and over again, you can just wrap 'em up between a #/bin/bash and an
exit, kick back and watch the penguin do the Donkey-work. As ever this
is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what can be done with shell
scripts, have a look ( NOT a tweak!! :) ) at some of the files in the
/etc directory, many of these are shell scripts and are wonderfully
scary:)
________________________________________________________________________
Sunil's alphabet soup decoder
You asked for help? You got a reply? You couldn't understand all those
abbreviations in it?
Well look no further, here is a small list of abbreviations, just in
case you were wondering, WTF does $ABBREVIATION mean?
NG Newsgroup
LM Linux Mandrake
MS Microsoft
M$ Microsoft
FUD Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt
LOL Laugh Out Loud
WTF What The F*ck
IMO In My Opinion
BTW By The Way
BRS Big Red Switch (power button)
PFY Pimple Faced Youth
IMHO In My Humble Opinion
ROFL Roll On Floor Laughing
BSOD Blue Screen Of Death
BOFH Bastard Operator From Hell
RTFM Read The Flippin' Manual
YMMV Your Mileage May Vary
LART Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool
FWIW For What It's Worth
IIRC If I Recall Correctly
LMAO Laughing My A** Off
AFAIK As Far A I Know
AFAICT As Far As I Can Tell
---------------------------------
Ones not listed here are to be found
HERE
________________________________________________________________________
Some other mindbendigly useful links
http://www.linuxdoc.org --the repository of All Wisdom
http://www.mandrakeuser.org --Very useful guides
http://www.linux-newbie.org --Speaks for itself really:)
http://www.mandrakecampus.org --Online courses, very good ( although,
strangely, the Admin course doesn't cover deleting the accounts of users
who stole your parking space, or even how to wire an ethernet plug into
the mains for the ultimate vengance) see......here.........
http://bofh.ntk.net/Bastard.html --for an explanation and a damned good
chuckle)
http://www.linuxmandrake.com --Home, home on the range
http://www.linuxheadquarters.com --Some very good everday use tutorials.
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/ wonderful resource read a bit a day
and laugh your way to knowledge
And don't forget your /usr/share/doc directory, it has much wisdom. Also
look on your cd's or hard drive for a Document called "rute.pdf" ( from
rute.nn.n.rpm I believe. It is like having a UNIX drill-instructor in
your ear, but if you follow it's order you will be a lean mean Linux
machine.
THE LAST WORD
You have taken a big step forward if you have read ( and understood)
this page. You aren't in any danger of re-writing Linux from the ground
up just yet, but hopefully you will be best friends with your terminal
and ready to do battle with all the other options for the commands we
have discussed as well as being prepared for the many dozens of others
lurking in the depths of your box just waiting on your orders.
Go forth, and enjoy your penguin:)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
There you have it! The Top Ten most useful commands for newbies, I
believe if you read this all, poke about for a while, come back and read
it again you will be in pretty good shape. Then, (and this is the
important bit) find some friends to show off to as your mouse sits idle
while you molest your poor machine like an oldschool hacker. If you have
a burning desire to add a command, then write up a little paragraph on
your personal favourite and mail it to me at
Mail
Feel free to send any good newbie article links you know of. I am most
intrested in things simmillar to this, stuff that opens your eyes and
makes you say "ooooooh".:)
All flames directed to /dev/null
________________________________________________________________________
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Creating a Personal or Company Budget with OpenOffice/StarOffice Calc
Part 1: Basics
Calc is a free spreadsheet for GNU-Linux, FreeBSD, MAC, MS-Windows,
Unix, and more
Mike Angelo -- 21 December 2003 (C) -- Page 1
Article Index
* Introduction
* Overview of Today's Calc Tutorial
* The Hands-On OpenOffice Calc Tutorial
Getting Started
Labeling the columns or data fields
Formatting the cells
Tweaking the document titles
Letting Calc do the math
Adding data to your budget
Finished
* Resources
Books
OpenOffice.org Note
Due to some trademarking concerns, the OpenOffice software suite and its
development organization both are officially named OpenOffice.org.
However, it's lots easier to say, write, and read just plain OpenOffice
rather than OpenOffice.org which is somewhat more cumbersome to say,
write, and read. Thus, in this article we use the easier to deal with
name of OpenOffice -- in pursuit of linguistic efficiency.
Microsoft Office & OpenOffice Licensing Note
The applicable Microsoft greedy, end-user agreements (EULAs) taken
together with Microsoft's horrible Product Activation system mean that
With MS Office 2003 and its product family including MS Excel, you are
restricted to installing Office 2003 on only one desktop computer and
one laptop computer for each copy or license for MS Office 2003 that you
buy from Microsoft.
OpenOffice, including Calc, is Open Source Software and thus not only
free, but you may install it on as many machines as you like.
Please see the Microsoft Product Activation Note in the right-hand
sidebar in our article, OpenOffice 1.1 -- A Complete Office/Productivity
Software Suite.
For more about why Linux is so much a better choice, please see our
article Gaël Duval Tells Why Mandrake Linux Is Better Than MS Windows
To learn how to run MS Windows-based software and accessories in
GNU-Linux, please see our article Crossover Office 2.1 Runs MS Windows
Software on GNU-Linux Systems
In this hands-on tutorial, you will learn how to use
OpenOffice/StarOffice Calc's powerful number-crunching and financial
features by creating a simple personal, family, or company budget.
Previously, you learned how to use Calc to create a simple contact
manager or personal information manager (PIM).
You can later apply the basic skills and principles that you learn in
this tutorial to design and create all sorts of financial and accounting
forms, tools, and reports with Calc. Thus you will be able to use Calc
to manage and track your income, expenses and payables, receipts and
receivables, bill payments, inventory, assets, debts, taxes, and lots
more.
For an overview of OpenOffice, please see our article OpenOffice 1.1 --
A Complete Office/Productivity Software Suite. Also, you might find it
helpful to review our OpenOffice/StarOffice Writer tutorial if you
already have not done so.
Calc is the spreadsheet component of the OpenOffice.org and StarOffice
office/productivity suites. It is powerful number-crunching, financial,
and data-organization software. That puts OpenOffice Calc and StarOffice
Calc right up there with Lotus 123 and Microsoft Excel as a major
spreadsheet application.
Unlike Lotus 123 and Excel, OpenOffice Calc is free and also available
for all the major computer platforms -- GNU-Linux, Free BSD, LinuxPPC,
Mac OS X or X11, MS Windows, Unix, and more. That puts OpenOffice Calc
way ahead of Lotus 123 and Microsoft Excel, the comparable IBM and
Microsoft spreadsheet products.
StarOffice also is a multi-platform product, however, it is not free.
Rather, it is a commercial version of OpenOffice, but much less
expensive than MS Office. OpenOffice and StarOffice are very similar in
form and function. Thus you can apply this tutorial to both OpenOffice
Calc and StarOffice Calc.
Overview of Today's Calc Tutorial
In today's tutorial, let's create a simple budget with OpenOffice Calc.
This budget planner and report tutorial is about Calc's use for number
crunching and financial data organization and analyses. Although this
tutorial is discussed in terms of OpenOffice, it pretty much applies to
StarOffice also.
The purpose of today's tutorial is:
(a) to introduce people that never have used a spreadsheet for
number crunching or financial analyses to spreadsheet
number-crunching and financial analyses basics,
(b) to introduce people that never have used OpenOffice Calc or
StarOffice Calc to Calc basics,
(c) and to help MS Excel and Lotus 123 users migrate to
OpenOffice Calc.
Thus the focus of today's how-to article is on the basics of Calc's
number-crunching function rather than setting up Calc and navigating it.
That was covered in our Calc contact and personal information tutorial.
If you have a major GNU-Linux distribution, you likely already have
OpenOffice and its Calc module. OpenOffice is included with many
prominent GNU-Linux distributions.
If you are an MS Windows user you might not already have OpenOffice
installed. Whichever of the above listed OSs you use; you can download
and install OpenOffice at no charge to you. Download links are in the
Resources section on page 3 at the end of this tutorial.
If you prefer commercial or boxed-product software to open source or
free software, try the commercial version of OpenOffice, StarOffice.
Sun's StarOffice is $80 for the boxed product. There is a link to Sun's
comparison of StarOffice to OpenOffice in the Resources section at the
end of this article.
On the other hand, Microsoft Office is very pricey. For just MS Excel
2003 alone, Microsoft's listed price is $229 (new, upgrade is $109). The
Standard MS Office 2003 suite, which includes Excel, Outlook,
PowerPoint, and Word, lists for $399 (new, upgrade is $239) on
Microsoft's Web site. The full blown MS Office 2003 Professional suite
lists for $499 (new, upgrade is $329) on Microsoft's Web site.
Additionally, MS Office and its component applications such as Excel
come with very consumer un-friendly licensing and the horrible Microsoft
Product Activation mechanism. For those reasons we recommend OpenOffice
1.1 and StarOffice 7 over MS Office 2003 or MS Office XP. Moreover, you
can save lots of money by using OpenOffice 1.1 or StarOffice 7 instead
of MS Office 2003.
Please see the Licensing and Product Activation Notes in the right-hand
sidebar, above.
Figure 1, below, is a simple personal budget created to demonstrate
OpenOffice Calc as a number-crunching and financial data analysis
application, the OpenOffice Monthly Budget Demo. The view in Figure 1 is
the finished product, as it would appear printed.
There are many budget and financial management programs readily
available. However, it is very easy for you to create your own.
By using OpenOffice/StarOffice Calc to create your very own budget and
financial management program, you have the advantage of being able to
customize it just the way you want it. Moreover, since
OpenOffice/StarOffice and its Calc spreadsheet module run on most major
operating system platforms, you can open a Calc-based budget or
financial management program and work with it on almost any computer
system. You cannot do that with Microsoft Office or Lotus 123.
Figure 1. A simple personal budget created to demonstrate OpenOffice
Calc as a number-crunching and financial data analysis application. This
view is as it would appear printed. Please see text for an explanation.
Figures 2 and 3 on pages 2 and 3 show the starting and finished working
views of the OpenOffice Monthly Budget Demo opened in a Calc.
The Hands-On OpenOffice Calc Tutorial
* Getting Started
Start by opening a Calc spreadsheet and inserting OpenOffice Monthly
Budget Demo in cell A1. Then set that title in 20-pt. Nimbus Sans L,
bold and center it. If Nimbus Sans L is not available in your copy of
OpenOffice or StarOffice, please pick another sans-serif font such as
Arial or Albany.
If you know how to do all that, skip on down to the Labeling the columns
or data fields section of this article on page 2. If not, please
continue with this section.
To create your budget spreadsheet, first please launch OpenOffice (or
StarOffice) Calc. If OpenOffice did not open in Calc when you launched
it; simply click on File > New > Spreadsheet on the main menu bar.
To change fonts, go to the second drop-down box from the left in the
Object Bar. That's the middle toolbar at the top of the Calc desktop in
Figures 2 and 3, on pages 2 and 3. Then click on the down-arrow and
scroll down until you see Nimbus Sans L. Next click on Nimbus Sans L to
select it.
Alternatively you can go to the Menu bar and click on Format > Cells >
Font to open the Font tab. Then in the Font selection pane, scroll down
until you see Nimbus Sans L. Then click on Nimbus Sans L and then on OK.
If Nimbus Sans L is not available in your copy of OpenOffice or
StarOffice, please pick another sans-serif font such as Arial or Albany.
If you are already familiar with OpenOffice Writer or StarOffice Writer,
you might have noticed that this font management system almost is the
very same look, feel, and procedure for changing fonts in Writer. That's
because OpenOffice/StarOffice is a well-integrated suite of
office/productivity applications. Well-integrated suite means that the
OpenOffice/StarOffice desktop and workspace has the same underlying
user-interface architecture across all the OpenOffice/StarOffice
applications.
Nevertheless, there are some differences. For example the menu route to
the fonts in Writer is Format > Character > Font but is Format > Cells >
Font in Calc. In Microsoft Word 2000, the menu route to the fonts is
simply Format > Font.
* See Labeling the columns or data
fields on Page 2 ----->
Continued on Page 2
----->
Article Index
* Introduction
* Overview of Today's Calc Tutorial
* The Hands-On OpenOffice Calc Tutorial
Getting Started
Labeling the columns or data fields
Formatting the cells
Tweaking the document titles
Letting Calc do the math
Adding data to your budget
Finished
* Resources
Books
Related Articles
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Three Worlds
________________________________________________________________________
Copyright 2000-2003 -- MozillaQuest -- Brodheadsville, Pa..USA -- All
Rights Reserved
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Recently we were in need of moving data between our family's Internet
machine and my childern's machines. We have a single machine that runs
Fedora Core 1, which the kids use to surf the net and chat. My daughter
has a laptop running Red Hat 9 and my son's machine is running XP.
Neither of their machines have Internet access so they wanted a means to
move files back and forth while not being connected to the network.
We decided a USB Flash Drive would be a nice device to try, and felt the
compatibility with Linux would not be an issue since I already use a USB
card reader on my workstation to transfer pictures off my digital
camera.
We purchased a Kanguru MicroDrive + with 128mb ram. We chose the "+"
model because the company's product web site claimed it worked with
Linux and it supports additional capacity using Secure digital cards,
which my daughter's mp3 player also uses. The price was also right, at
$64.95 for the 128mb device.
The microdrive arrived in good condition and comes well packaged with a
mini documentation CD, a very sturdy USB extention cable, and a carrying
neck strap.
I could not resist the CD so in my machine it went. It had documentation
for all their devices and there was a .pdf and .doc file for this device
for installation. Although these were nice documents, there were no
installation instructions for Linux, only Mac and Windows. Oh well, we
will make our own instructions.
I plugged in the USB extention cable on my workstation, then plugged in
the microdrive.
As root I ran the fdisk command to see what the drive specs were so I
cound create a mount point for the drive.
bash-2.05b# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sdb: 130 MB, 130023424 bytes
16 heads, 32 sectors/track, 496 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 512 * 512 = 262144 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 495 126704 6 FAT16
As you can see, our device is /dev/sdb1. It is formatted FAT16 and is
130 MB, cool.
Next we will add a mount point for it and allow all users on the system
to use it. First, still logged in as root, I created a directory to
mount the device.
bash-2.05b# mkdir /mnt/microdrive
Now we add it to the /etc/fstab by adding the following to the file:
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/microdrive auto auto,user,rw 0 0
This will allow anyone that uses the machine to mount the device. In the
next step I created a simple bash script to mount the device so my kids
can run it, and access the device if it's not plugged in when they turn
on the machine. If the device is plugged in on boot a drive shows up on
the desktop and it is fully read/writable by the user.
#!/bin/bash
mount /mnt/microdrive
# thats it!
I made the file executable:
# chmod 755 microdrive
Then placed it in /usr/bin. I created a link to it on their desktops and
they were done.
If Gnome is used, this script can be placed in each person's
~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts folder and a new option will appear if they
right click on the desktop under the scripts option. This will run the
script which will mount the device.
These are really nice, simple devices to use. You can get them up to a
gig in size and they are easy to configure under Linux. We will never
use a floppy again! (except maybe for a boot disk)
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
How to Use GIMP for Photo and Image Editing
GIMP is a free digital-photograph and digital-image editing program for
the Linux, Mac, Unix, and Windows platforms
Use GIMP rather than Photoshop and save moneyCropping and scaling
(resizing) photos, along with adjusting the brightness and contrast of
them, are among the most basic elements of photo editing. In this
hands-on tutorial, you will learn how to use The GIMP's powerful
cropping, scaling, brightness, and contrast tools by editing a
photograph in our digital darkroom.
You can later apply the basic skills, elements, and principles that you
learn in this tutorial to edit and manipulate photos, clipart, scanned
images and other digital graphics. You also can use the GIMP to design
and create all sorts of stunning computer graphics and images from
scratch. However, today's tutorial focuses on editing already existing
images with the GIMP.
Originally, GIMP was a Linux/UNIX program. However, it has been ported
to the Microsoft Windows platform -- that effectively makes GIMP a
cross-platform (XP) program. There appear to be some Mac versions of the
GIMP now also.
The GIMP and Adobe Photoshop are comparable, digital-darkroom, software
products as to features, functions, and usability -- other than some
advanced professional and prepress stuff in Photoshop. The basic
photograph and image cropping, scaling, color-brightness adjustment, and
color-contrast adjustment operations covered in today's tutorial are
just as easily done and well-done with the GIMP as with Photoshop.
Moreover, GIMP is free and Photoshop costs $699. Because GIMP is an
excellent, pixel-based, image manipulation and editing program and
because of licensing and pricing issues, we chose to use the GIMP rather
than Photoshop in our digital darkroom. More about the GIMP and
Photoshop further on in this article.
For more information about The GIMP, please see our article Overview of
The GIMP - a free photograph and digital-image editing program.
Overview of Today ' s GIMP Tutorial
In today's tutorial, let's edit one of the photos from the Goose series
used in the GIMP Overviewarticle.
The purpose of today's tutorial is:
(a) to introduce people that never have used an image or
photo-editing program to image-editing and photo-editing
software basics,
(b) to introduce people that never have used The GIMP to GIMP
basics,
(c) and to help Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements users
migrate to the GIMP.
Thus the focus of today's how-to article is on the basics of using
GIMP's cropping, scaling, brightness adjustment, and contrast adjustment
tools. You will learn how to use these tools by editing a digital
photograph.
If you have a digital camera, the GIMP is an important tool that you
should have in your digital darkroom. Please see About the Digital
Darkroom in the right-hand sidebar.
The GIMP is included with many prominent GNU-Linux distributions. If you
have a major GNU-Linux distribution such as Mandrake or SUSE, you likely
already have the GIMP.
If you are an MS Windows user you might not already have the GIMP
installed. The good news is that whichever of the above listed OSs you
use; you can download and install the GIMP at no charge to you. Download
links are in the Resources section at the end of this tutorial on page
4.
Figure 1, below, shows the GIMP version 1.3 opened in SUSE Linux
Professional 9.0 and the KDE desktop. The Geese picture to be edited is
in the upper right of the screen shot.
http://mozillaquest.com/OpenSource04/Graphics/Gimp-HowTo-Goose-crop-01_503x571.j\
pg
igure 1. Screen shot of GIMP version 1.3 running on SUSE Linux 9.0 and
the KDE desktop for Linux. The crop tool has been used to place a crop
box around the area that will remain after cropping. Please see text for
an explanation. (Geese photo by Mike Angelo)
All the figures in today's tutorial were made with the GIMP version 1.3
opened in SUSE Linux Professional 9.0 and the KDE desktop. Screen shots
were made using the GIMP's screen shot feature.
The next major GIMP release will be GIMP 2.0. The current end-user
version is GIMP 1.2.5. In between those two versions is GIMP 1.3.x, the
pre-2.0 developers' version.
Since this tutorial is based upon GIMP 1.3, it should also be applicable
to GIMP 2.0 when it is released. The tools used in today's tutorial also
are in GIMP 1.2.x. Thus, this tutorial also is applicable to GIMP 1.2.x.
The Hands-On GIMP Tutorial
* Getting Started
There is no one, single, way to go about taking pictures or editing
them. There are different tools that you can use, even within one
photo-editing program. Moreover, there are different ways to use those
tools. The way this tutorial shows you how to do your digital-darkroom
work is just one of many approaches.
This tutorial shows you the mechanics of basic photograph and image
editing with the GIMP. Unfortunately, photograph and image artistry is
beyond the scope of today's tutorial.
However, it is much more the photo artistry than the mechanics that
makes great photos and graphics. If you are a college student, take a
studio (art) course to learn artistry basics. That is a real hands-on
studio course not some wimpy art appreciation course. Or if you are not
a college student, take a real, hands-on, studio course at your local
community college.
Let's enter the digital darkroom and start this lesson by opening the
GIMP. That should bring up the GIMP Toolbox and the default combination
dialog box.
(In pre-1.3 GIMP versions there are no combo dialog boxes they each are
individual, rather than combo, boxes. If you are a Photoshop user,
please note that palettes in Photoshop are called dialogs (as in dialog
boxes) in GIMP.)
The Toolbox is the upper left box in Figure 1, on page 1, and the
combination dialog box is the lower left box in Figure 1. Click on the
leftmost icon in the combination dialog box to display the Tool Options.
Next, open an image that you want to use for this tutorial. To do that,
go to the Menu Bar of the GIMP Tool Box, click on File > Open to bring
up the Open Image dialog box. Then navigate to the image file that you
wish to open and open it.
If you do not have an image to use for this tutorial, simply use the
GIMP to take a screen shot and use that screen shot for working through
this tutorial. To take a screen shot simply go to the Menu Bar of the
GIMP Tool Box and click on File > Acquire > Screen Shot to bring up the
Screen Shot dialog box.
In the Screen Shot dialog box, click on the Whole Screen radio button to
set it active. Next, please click on OK.
That should bring up a GIMP canvass or workspace window with an image of
the entire monitor screen at the time you made the screen shot.
Whether you have opened an image from your files or taken a screen shot
to use for this tutorial, it should resemble the canvass window in the
upper right of Figure 1, except your image or screen shot will be in the
canvass window rather than our geese.
In Figure 1, all the boxes and the canvass window were packed together
in order to make a compact screen shot for the figure. However, as you
have been opening the dialog panels and image canvass, you might have
noticed they are not packed together (docked). Rather they are floating
separately.
The floating dialog panels and canvass are nice as they let you arrange
your entire screen to let you work the way you like to work. You also
can dock them together if you like. However, arranging your workspace
and docking are not part of today's tutorial.
Before you start any actual editing of a photo or other image, it is a
good practice to make a backup copy of it. That way if you mess up while
making your edits, you still have an intact copy of the original.
* The first cropping
The real subject matter in the Figure 1 digital photograph is the geese.
However, there is lots of pond in the shot too. In this instance, some
of that surplusage is due to the camera having only a 3X optical zoom
and the geese being far from the camera. Some of the surplusage is
because in this exercise we want to use this graphic in a space that is
only 250-pixels wide. That calls for some cropping in the digital
darkroom.
Fortunately the original, before editing, photograph came out pretty
decent. It would make a nice two-foot or wider print, pretty much as is.
It also would look good, pretty much as is, on a 19-inch or larger
computer screen. However, for this exercise the job is to produce a
250-pixel wide rendition of it for an online magazine article graphic
(the headline graphic on page 1 of this tutorial).
The actual, original, digital photograph is 1600x1200 pixels (1,920,000
square pixels). The cropping will cut that down to 971x598 pixels
(580,658 square pixels). That's a reduction in canvass size to about
one-third (30%) the size of the original photo. Seventy per-cent of the
original photograph is not about the geese.
The area inside the rectangle around the geese in Figure 1 is what will
remain after the cropping. Everything outside of that rectangle will get
snipped out in the cropping.
After the cropping, the remaining image will be scaled down to a
250-pixel wide graphic. If the original 1600x1200 pixel digital photo
were not cropped prior to scaling, the geese would be too small to see
well in the final 250-pixel wide photograph.
Also, the cropping and scaling brings the original photo file-size down
from a 835-KB JPEG to a 14-KB JPEG. Keeping graphics file sizes down is
very important for Web use.
To get a feel for just how big the original 1600x1200 pixel digital
photo is, please take a look at Figure 2, Father Goose. This is just the
Drake at his original size in the 1600x1200 digital photograph. The size
of Father Goose alone is 533x380 pixels.
This is just the Drake at his original size in the 1600x1200 digital
photograph. The size of Father Goose alone is 533x380 pixels. Please see
text for an explanation. (Geese photo by Mike Angelo)
It's a good practice to include a little extra in your photographs when
you shoot them. You always can snip off the extra later. But once the
shot is taken, you cannot add to it, at least not without using
computer-imaging tricks after the shot is taken. Thus, one thing you
likely will do when you bring a photo into your digital darkroom is to
crop it.
Now that you have the GIMP and an image open, it's time to grab the
digital scissors, do some snipping, and have some fun. So, let's get
started with editing the image by cropping it.
Please look at the GIMP Toolbox in Figure 1, on page 1. The second icon
from the left in the third row of tool icons is a knife icon. That's the
cropping tool icon. Click it to open the crop tool. The crop tool is
active in Figure 1.
Now, move the mouse pointer over the geese photo or whatever image you
are editing. Please notice how the mouse-pointer changes into the
crop-tool pointer as the mouse-pointer moves into the image/photo
canvass.
Place the crop-tool pointer arrow at what will be the upper left corner
of the cropped image. Then depress the mouse button and drag the
crop-tool pointer to the bottom right of what will be the cropped image
and release the mouse button.
That creates a box around what will be the cropped image. Please see the
tight box around the geese in Figure 1. Let's call that box the crop
box.
This procedure brings up the Crop and Resize dialog box shown under the
geese canvass in Figure 1. Use the Crop and Resize dialog box to tweak
the size and location of the crop box.
The Origin X and Y input boxes set the location of the crop box. In
Figure 1, the crop box starts 318-pixels in from the left edge of the
canvass (X) and 302-pixels up from the bottom of the canvas (Y). That
puts the origin of the crop box at the bottom left of the crop box.
The Width and Height input boxes set the dimensions (size) of the crop
box. In Figure 1, the crop box is 971-pixels wide and 598-pixels high.
Even if your initial drawing of the crop box is perfect, try
incrementing and decrementing the four input boxes to see how they
adjust the location and size of the crop box.
When you have the crop box just the way you want it, click the Crop
button in the Crop & Resize dialog box.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Finished
That should do it. Nice work.
Please see Figure 7 in the sidebar to the right for our finished photo.
However, today ' s lesson is just the beginning -- just a start. There
are many more things that you can do just with the tools used today.
Moreover, the GIMP has so many more tools, too. Until our next class,
you can learn and do lots on your own.
* On your own
There are lots more dialogs, filters, and other such tools to get your
digital photographs and images just the way you want them. For example,
in the Tools > Color Tools sub-menus you also will find dialogs to
adjust color hue, saturation, balance, and more. There are lots of
goodies in the Filters and Script-Fu menus too. Play around with these
tools on your own to see what they can do and to learn how to use them.
You will find brief introductions to many of these tools in Chapter 17,
Image Menu: Colors, Part VI, Filters, and Chapter 42, Script-Fu:
Description and Function in Karin and Olof S. Kylander ' s book, Gimp
User's Manual. The Gimp User's Manual is online and there is a
free-download link in the Resources section at the end of this article.
Version-wise, Gimp User's Manual is somewhat outdated. It is about GIMP
1.0.x. The current stable version of GIMP is 1.2.5 and the current
developer version is 1.3.x. Moreover, GIMP 2.0 is expected to be
released soon.
Nevertheless, you may freely download the Gimp User's Manual. That makes
it a very good deal and well worth using to learn how to use the GIMP.
The main point of this versions discussion is to let you know that GIMP
has lots more features and many user-interface improvements since Gimp
User's Manual was published.
About the Geese Photo
The geese photograph was shot with a Casio 2.11 Mega-pixel QV-2300UX LCD
Digital Camera with a 3X optical zoom at f/2.8 and 1/355 second. The
original image size is 1600x1200 pixels. The Casio 2.11 Mega-pixel a
very nice camera, by the way.
GIMP v Photo$hop
GIMP looks and feels much like Adobe Photoshop (GIMP = GNU Image
Manipulation Program). Unlike Photoshop, the GIMP is free (as in beer)
and does not need to be registered or activated.
There are desktop and user interface (UI) differences between GIMP and
Photoshop that take some getting use to if you already are familiar with
Photoshop. Traditionally, Photoshop has had an easier to use desktop and
user interface. However, the GIMP 1.3 desktop and UI changes all that.
GIMP now is as easy to use as is Photoshop perhaps even easier.
GIMP does not have all the advanced, commercial, pre-press features that
Photoshop does have. However, it comes pretty close to Photoshop with
actual photo editing and image manipulation. Moreover, GIMP has some
features that Photoshop does not have.
In short, unless you are a professional photographer or image editor who
needs Photoshop's advanced or prepress features, you likely can do just
about everything that you need or want to do with GIMP instead of Adobe
Photoshop. That is particularly true where digital photography and
editing photos and images for Web pages are involved.
Moreover at Photoshop's $649 price tag ($169 for upgrade from a licensed
copy of Photoshop 7 or earlier) there are 649 more good reasons to use
GIMP instead of Photoshop.
Photoshop has a greedy and consumer-unfriendly end-user license
agreement (EULA). GIMP is free and has a very consumer-friendly license
known as the General Public License (GPL). Please see the Adobe
Photoshop & GIMP Licensing Note in the right-hand sidebar.
Additionally, Photoshop has a horrible and very anti-consumer Product
Activation requirement. GIMP has no such crap! Please see the Adobe
Product Activation Note in the sidebar.
A very nice thing about GIMP is that you can try it without paying a
cent. Moreover, if you try the GIMP and like it, you do not have to pay
a cent to keep on using it. If you are a Linux user, chances are that
you already have GIMP installed on your Linux-based computer.
If you are a Microsoft Windows user, chances are that you do not already
have the GIMP installed. Nevertheless you can download a Windows version
of GIMP, free, and easily install it yourself. If your Linux
distribution did not come with the GIMP you also can download a free
Linux version of the GIMP. Download links are in the Resources section
at the end of this article.
Conclusions
The GIMP is an excellent image, graphic, and photo editing program for
the Linux, Unix, and Windows platforms. It also can be used to create
graphics and drawings from scratch.
Four basic digital photo and image editing tasks are cropping, scaling,
brightness adjustment, and contrast adjustment. In today's tutorial you
were introduced to these tasks and GIMP tools that help you to do those
tasks.
The coverage in today's tutorial is just the tip of the iceberg, even
for just cropping, scaling, brightness adjustment, and contrast
adjustment. It's a start in learning the mechanics of editing digital
photographs and images with the GIMP.
In order to get good at creating stunning photos and graphics, you need
to learn, in depth, how to use the tools covered today plus all the GIMP
tools. Much of that learning is a matter of experimenting with the tools
and much of it is a matter of gaining experience using the tools.
Don't forget that creating stunning photos and graphics is more than
merely the mechanics of using the GIMP tools. Artistry is very
important. A good way to learn the artistry is to take a studio art
course.
If you are looking for a first class image, graphic, and photo editing
program, give the GIMP a spin. Considering that the GIMP is a free
download, that should be a very easy thing for you to do.
GIMP often is referred to as an Adobe Photoshop clone because it has
pretty much the same collection of features and functions that Photoshop
has. However, it appears that rather than thinking of GIMP as a
Photoshop clone, it would be more appropriate to think of the GIMP and
Photoshop as similar software products of comparable quality.
On the other hand when it comes to pricing and licensing, Photoshop
falls woefully-far short of the GIMP. GIMP is free compared to the $649
list price for Photoshop. Moreover, GIMP's licensing is very
consumer/user friendly. Adobe is very deficient in this arena, too.
Adobe Photoshop licensing is extremely consumer/user unfriendly.
Moreover, Photoshop licensing imposes Adobe's horrible Product
Activation mechanism.
Unless you are a professional photographer or image editor who needs
Photoshop's prepress features, you likely ought to us the GIMP rather
than Adobe Photoshop. Considering that the GIMP is a free download, that
should be a very easy thing for you to do.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Sizing your photograph
The original geese photo was 1600x1200 pixels. After cropping, the new
photo size is 971x598 pixels. However, we want the picture to fit in a
250-pixel column width. To do that, let's use GIMP's scaling tool.
Figure 3, below, shows the cropped geese photo in the GIMP canvass widow
at the top right and the GIMP Navigation dialog on the bottom right.
Here, the + and - zoom icons (magnifying glasses) at the bottom of the
Navigation dialog have been used to set the view zoom to 1:3 (one third
size). That's so most of the image will fit into the canvass window.
At that 1:3 view zoom factor, the photo is larger than the size of the
canvass window. So, the mouse was used to drag the Navigator dialog view
box to center the geese on the canvass. Try setting different zoom
factors and moving the photo around on the canvass.
View zoom and scaling are two related but very different things.
Changing the view zoom does not make any changes to the photo or image
you are viewing. It only changes the size of the photo or image in the
canvass window.
On the other hand, scaling changes the actual dimensions of the photo or
image that you are viewing.
Please notice the combo dialog box in the bottom left of Figure 3 has
been toggled to show the Undo History dialog. You can lengthen that Undo
History dialog by dragging the bottom edge of that dialog box down.
To scale the cropped geese photo, go to the Menu Bar on the canvass
window and click Image > Scale Image to open the GIMP Scale Image dialog
box. Figure 4, below, shows the Scale Image dialog box.
If you are using an older version of the GIMP that does not have a Menu
Bar on the canvass window, alternate click (left-click if you are using
a right-handed mouse) anywhere on the canvass. That pops up a menu. In
that popup menu, click Image > Scale Image to open the GIMP Scale Image
dialog box.
Figure 3. Screen shot of the cropped geese photo in the GIMP canvass
widow at the top right and the GIMP Navigation dialog on the bottom
right. Please see text for an explanation. (Geese photo by Mike Angelo)
For this exercise, we are concerned only with the image's pixel size.
Please notice that at the top of the Pixel Dimensions box in the Scale
Image dialog box the fixed values for the Original Width and Height. In
Figure 4, below, those values are 971 pixels and 598 pixels.
Please notice also the lock icon to the right of the Ratio input boxes
in Figure 4. You can toggle lock and unlock mode by clicking on the lock
icon.
In Figure 4, the aspect ratio is locked. That means that if you make a
change in either height or width of the selection, the value of the
other dimension is automatically changed so that the height-to-width
ratio of the selection is maintained.
Because the width of the cropped geese photo is to be 250-pixels wide,
250 is entered into the New Width input box in the Scale Image dialog
box shown in Figure 4. When the Enter key is punched, the new Height
value is automatically set to 154 pixels because the aspect ratio is
locked.
For your photo or image just do the same things. Go to the Menu Bar on
the canvass and click Image > Scale Image to open the GIMP Scale Image
dialog box. Make sure the aspect ratio is locked.
Then insert a value for the new pixel-width or pixel-height that you
want for your photo. Hit Enter and the other dimension value
automatically changes. Click OK and viola', your cropped photo or other
image is scaled to the new dimensions.
Figure 4. Screen shot of the GIMP Scale Image dialog box. Please see
text for an explanation.
Figure 5, below, shows our geese photo after scaling. Please notice the
rulers in the canvass-screen at the top right of Figure 5 show the new
photo width of 250 pixels. Also, the photo now is smaller than the
canvass-screen size.
Meanwhile, the photograph is entirely within the Navigator dialog image
display. Also, the scaling action has been added to the Undo History
dialog.
Figure 5. Screen shot of geese photo after scaling. Please see text for
an explanation. (Geese photo by Mike Angelo)Brightening things up
For the geese photo example, the + zoom icon (magnifying glass) at the
bottom of the Navigation dialog was used to set the zoom to 1:1 (actual
size) in moving towards Figure 6, below. That's so the image fills the
canvass window and we are seeing it as it will appear on a Web page when
we make the brightness and contrast adjustments.
Overall, the geese photo in Figure 5 is a little too dark. So, let's
brighten it up some.
To do that, open the Brightness-Contrast color tool dialog. Go to the
Menu Bar on the canvass window and click Tools > Color Tools >
Brightness-Contrast. Then the Brightness level is set to 36 and the
Contrast level is set to 100. Please see Figure 6.
This brightness-contrast adjustment brings out the blueness of the water
and makes the water appear more watery. However, there are tradeoffs
when you do these sorts of adjustments. Please notice that although the
photo overall is much brighter and livelier, the feathers coloration has
changed and is somewhat faded.
Figure 6. Screen shot of the GIMP Brightness-Contrast color tool dialog
in action. Please see text for an explanation. (Geese photo by Mike
Angelo)
Figure 7, on page 4, is the same geese photo with the Brightness level
set to 40 and the Contrast level set to 30. The feathers are truer in
color and detail to the real scene that was photographed. But it just
does not have the zing of the rendition created in Figure 6.
There are editing tricks that could be used to have both the zing of the
bluer, more watery, water and the truer, more original color and detail
of the feathers in the same photo. However, those tricks are beyond the
scope of this lesson.
To adjust the brightness and contrast for your photo or image just do
the same things. Go to the Menu Bar on the canvass window and click
Tools > Color Tools > Brightness-Contrast. Then play around with the
brightness and contrast adjustment settings.
If you do not have a Menu Bar on the canvass window, alternate click
anywhere on the canvass. That pops up a menu. In that popup menu, click
Tools > Color Tools > Brightness-Contrast to bring up the
Brightness-Contrast dialog box.
When you get your photograph or image just the way you want it, save it.
To save your edited photo, alternate click anywhere on the canvas and
then click File > Save As.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Hi,
if I want the kernel to load a specific module, do I only need to
specify it in /etc/modprobe.conf, or do I also need to add a line like
'modprobe x' to /etc/rc.d/rc.modules (I'm using slackware 9.1)?
Thanks,
dim
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Hash: SHA1
On Mar 1 2004, dim45@... wrote:
> if I want the kernel to load a specific module, do I only need to
> specify it in /etc/modprobe.conf, or do I also need to add a line like
> 'modprobe x' to /etc/rc.d/rc.modules (I'm using slackware 9.1)?
You need to add (or uncomment) the appropriate command in
/etc/rc.d/rc.modules, or some other system startup file. /etc/modprobe.conf
is only used to specify module options, so shouldn't really be of concern
here unless you have some odd setup.
- --
() Michael Kjörling - michael@... - SM0YBY QTH JO89XI ^..^
/\ OpenPGP: 3723 9372 c245 d6a8 18a6 36ac 758f 8749 bde9 ada6 \/
ASCII Ribbon Campaign - Against HTML Mail, Proprietary Attachments.
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hi gamers,
Im runnig redhat 9 and i was configuring gnome-terminal to
my falvor.Everything was coming up great except that i changed one
setting in configuration of gnome-terminal.The result is as i click
the terminal it opens and kills itself within a second.What i did in
setting is ,
I override the terminal to start with a new command instead of the
bashrc setting.I gave the command date for it.
I really love this ternminal..
Would be grateful for ur suggestions
Thanks
Vicky
Hello AMAZING,
Tuesday, March 2, 2004, 7:03:57 AM, you wrote:
A lot
I don't do image work in linux. Please put it on a website and paste a
link here. Geocities free version is good or you can try
www.routhost.com at 2 $ a month. Please don't post here.
--
Best regards,
Nagendra Pratap Singh mailto:nzsamuel@...
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On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 22:12:55 -0000
"Ask me" <vicky_v20@...> wrote:
> hi gamers,
> Im runnig redhat 9 and i was configuring gnome-terminal to
> my falvor.Everything was coming up great except that i changed one
> setting in configuration of gnome-terminal.The result is as i click
> the terminal it opens and kills itself within a second.What i did in
> setting is ,
> I override the terminal to start with a new command instead of the
> bashrc setting.I gave the command date for it.
> I really love this ternminal..
> Would be grateful for ur suggestions
> Thanks
> Vicky
Open up GConf editor (Run -> gconf-editor or Configuration Editor in the
menu) and look under apps -> gnome-terminal. You should be able to
either, change the default_profile under global to Default, or, change
the custom_command setting (delete your command and leave the entry
blank) under profiles -> Your_Profile.
- --
Mike
Web Site: http://www.ice2o.com
JabberID: mpeters@...
Registered Linux User #247123
NO. I CANNOT BE BIDDEN. I CANNOT BE FORCED. I WILL DO ONLY THAT WHICH I
KNOW TO BE RIGHT.
(Mort)
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Hello,
I'm looking for a fast, open source database software (doesn't need to be
relational, but ability to select with queries would be nice). However, it
can't depend on a server. :(
It needs to have a database that can look like this, kinda:
| ID | Name | Version | Files | Deps |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
---------------------
| 1 | hello | 1.0 | /usr/bin/hello | hello_lib |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
--------------------
Also, it needs to have a good C/Pascal API.
Any ideas on what I can do?
Thanks,
Taj
--
Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny--
Did you ever try buying them without money?
-- Ogden Nash
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On Mar 2 2004, taj@... wrote:
> Also, it needs to have a good C/Pascal API.
> Any ideas on what I can do?
What about the Berkeley DB libraries? Flat file, no server required (even
though there's nothing stopping you from running e.g. a MySQL server on the
same machine that runs the client software), nonrelational, and can store
just about anything.
Don't know if there is a Pascal wrapper for those libraries but from what I
have understood they are pretty easy to use with C at least.
- --
() Michael Kjörling - michael@... - SM0YBY QTH JO89XI ^..^
/\ OpenPGP: 3723 9372 c245 d6a8 18a6 36ac 758f 8749 bde9 ada6 \/
ASCII Ribbon Campaign - Against HTML Mail, Proprietary Attachments.
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MySQL hands down...
http://www.mysql.org
JC Jones
On Tue, 2004-03-02 at 16:44, Taj Morton wrote:
> Hello,
> I'm looking for a fast, open source database software (doesn't need to be
> relational, but ability to select with queries would be nice). However, it
> can't depend on a server. :(
>
> It needs to have a database that can look like this, kinda:
> | ID | Name | Version | Files | Deps |
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
---------------------
> | 1 | hello | 1.0 | /usr/bin/hello | hello_lib |
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
--------------------
>
> Also, it needs to have a good C/Pascal API.
> Any ideas on what I can do?
> Thanks,
> Taj
Hi,
> MySQL hands down...
Yea, I know...but mysql requires a server :(.
--Taj
>
> http://www.mysql.org
>
> JC Jones
>
> On Tue, 2004-03-02 at 16:44, Taj Morton wrote:
> > Hello,
> > I'm looking for a fast, open source database software (doesn't need
> > to be relational, but ability to select with queries would be nice).
> > However, it can't depend on a server. :(
> >
> > It needs to have a database that can look like this, kinda:
> > | ID | Name | Version | Files | Deps
> > | --------------------------------------------------------------------
> > ---------------------------------
> > | 1 | hello | 1.0 | /usr/bin/hello |
> > hello_lib | ---------------------------------------------------------
> > -------------------------------------------
> >
> > Also, it needs to have a good C/Pascal API.
> > Any ideas on what I can do?
> > Thanks,
> > Taj
>
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe, email linux-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com, or visit
> http://www.yahoogroups.com. Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
Hi,
> What about the Berkeley DB libraries? Flat file, no server required (even
> though there's nothing stopping you from running e.g. a MySQL server on
> the same machine that runs the client software), nonrelational, and can
> store just about anything.
Yea, that's what I've been trying to hack into submission. There are only
Pascal wrappers for gdbm, and it seems (to me) that info can only be stored
on a key=value basis, am I correct, or backing up the wrong tree?
Thanks, Taj
On Tue, 2 Mar 2004, Taj Morton wrote:
> Hi,
> > What about the Berkeley DB libraries? Flat file, no server required (even
> > though there's nothing stopping you from running e.g. a MySQL server on
> > the same machine that runs the client software), nonrelational, and can
> > store just about anything.
> Yea, that's what I've been trying to hack into submission. There are only
> Pascal wrappers for gdbm, and it seems (to me) that info can only be stored
> on a key=value basis, am I correct, or backing up the wrong tree?
>
> Thanks, Taj
Have you looked at sqlite?
http://www.hwaci.com/sw/sqlite/
Andrew
Slackware Linux 9.1 / KDE 3.2 beta
'Why should I pay Bill Gates to fix HIS bugs?'
IMHO
apropos, info and man (#3, #2, #1) - you got to be able to navigate the
documentation
apt-get (#4) - do not need rpm if you have a debian distribution
mc (#5) - midnight commander (as this can do several different things and is
very easy to use I would say it is a newbe must have (does ls, cat, permissions,
cp, mv and it has a text editor)
lynx (#6) - I need a web browser (some documentation is html - and I need my /.
fix)
mutt (#7) - I need my mail
hey that is only 7.
Hermann
Taj Morton wrote:
>Hello,
>I'm looking for a fast, open source database software (doesn't need to be
>relational, but ability to select with queries would be nice). However, it
>can't depend on a server. :(
>
>
>
Check out sqlite
--
------------------------------------------------------
| Eddie J Schwartz <EdMcMan@[despammed.com|m00.net]> |
| AIM: Uncaring Eyes ICQ: 35576339 YHOO: edmcman2 |
| "We Trills have an expression -- at forty, you |
| think you know everything. At four hundred you |
| realize you know nothing." - Dax, Startrek DS9 |
------------------------------------------------------
On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 13:21:34 -0600
AMAZING POWERS OF OBSERVATION <m_epling@...> wrote:
> Number 10. ls
> Number 9. tar
> Number 8. permissions suite
> Number 7. RPM
> Number 6. locate
> Number 5. grep
> Number 4. cat
> Number 3. pico/nano
> Number 2. man
> Number 1. apropos
ifconfig, dhcp(c)d, ls, whereis, lsmod, modprobe, mplayer, xmms, sylpheed, scp,
ssh
ifconfig is essential, i would have liked to put ping in there.
scp is also essential, if you have two linux boxes, ftp does require more
setting up, for example, you must have a shell in /etc/passwd. modprobe and
lsmod are also essential as new users dont know which modules are loaded. i hear
so often that 'suse supports this' 'caldera supports that', its just whats
enabled in the kernel IMHO. if they like that distro and recompile the kernel,
they're laffing.
mplayer/xmms/sylpeed, just gui stuff really that i like and find essential.
Hello Taj,
Wednesday, March 3, 2004, 6:21:55 AM, you wrote:
Taj> Hi,
>> MySQL hands down...
Taj> Yea, I know...but mysql requires a server :(.
Taj> --Taj
>>
>> http://www.mysql.org
>>
>> JC Jones
>>
>> On Tue, 2004-03-02 at 16:44, Taj Morton wrote:
>> > Hello,
>> > I'm looking for a fast, open source database software (doesn't need
>> > to be relational, but ability to select with queries would be nice).
>> > However, it can't depend on a server. :(
>> >
>> > It needs to have a database that can look like this, kinda:
>> > | ID | Name | Version | Files | Deps
>> > |
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>> > ---------------------------------
>> > | 1 | hello | 1.0 | /usr/bin/hello
>> > hello_lib |
>> ---------------------------------------------------------
>> > -------------------------------------------
>> >
>> > Also, it needs to have a good C/Pascal API.
>> > Any ideas on what I can do?
>> > Thanks,
>> > Taj
Is it hard to install mysql on the same PC as your user program? Does
it use too many resources?
--
Best regards,
Nagendra Pratap Singh mailto:nzsamuel@...
Jesse G. Lands wrote:
> Can we stop with the mass posts of your magazine? Just post a link or
> something. This is just annoying. Especially being posted to more then
> one list.
I find them interesting, and a link wouldn't do me any good since I do
my mail offline.
--
===ronin@... (Dave Williams)==============================
== waiting, anticipating / for someone to save her soul / well, I ==
== ain't no new Messiah / but I'm close enough for rock and roll! ==
============================= http://www.bacomatic.org/~dw/index.htm
Hello Dave,
Wednesday, March 3, 2004, 11:46:31 AM, you wrote:
Dave> Jesse G. Lands wrote:
>> Can we stop with the mass posts of your magazine? Just post a link or
>> something. This is just annoying. Especially being posted to more then
>> one list.
Dave> I find them interesting, and a link wouldn't do me any good since I do
Dave> my mail offline.
I guess then the list should be mass posted to you. I opt out of it.
Other people who are interested are requested to contact
AMAZING POWERS OF OBSERVATION <m_epling@...> for off list
posts.
--
Best regards,
Nagendra Pratap Singh mailto:nzsamuel@...
It does not require a "server" in the essence of a seperate computer
that does just that. MySQL can run on a workstation machine, uses
minimal resources, and is very very fast. It's easy to set up, the C
libraries are very easy to use, it's very flexible, and very effecient.
What else could you ask for?
JC Jones
On Tue, 2004-03-02 at 10:21, Taj Morton wrote:
> Hi,
> > MySQL hands down...
> Yea, I know...but mysql requires a server :(.
> --Taj
> >
> > http://www.mysql.org
> >
> > JC Jones
> >
> > On Tue, 2004-03-02 at 16:44, Taj Morton wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > > I'm looking for a fast, open source database software (doesn't need
> > > to be relational, but ability to select with queries would be nice).
> > > However, it can't depend on a server. :(
> > >
> > > It needs to have a database that can look like this, kinda:
> > > | ID | Name | Version | Files | Deps
> > > | --------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > ---------------------------------
> > > | 1 | hello | 1.0 | /usr/bin/hello |
> > > hello_lib | ---------------------------------------------------------
> > > -------------------------------------------
> > >
> > > Also, it needs to have a good C/Pascal API.
> > > Any ideas on what I can do?
> > > Thanks,
> > > Taj
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > To unsubscribe, email linux-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com, or visit
> > http://www.yahoogroups.com. Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> To unsubscribe, email linux-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com, or visit
http://www.yahoogroups.com.
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
Nagendra Pratap Singh writes:
> Hello Dave,
>
> Wednesday, March 3, 2004, 11:46:31 AM, you wrote:
>
> Dave> Jesse G. Lands wrote:
>
>>> Can we stop with the mass posts of your magazine? Just post a link or
>>> something. This is just annoying. Especially being posted to more then
>>> one list.
>
> Dave> I find them interesting, and a link wouldn't do me any good since I do
> Dave> my mail offline.
>
> I guess then the list should be mass posted to you. I opt out of it.
> Other people who are interested are requested to contact
> AMAZING POWERS OF OBSERVATION <m_epling@...> for off list
> posts.
They are certainly much more interesting than all those job offered ads I
have been seeing lately.
Just a suggestion, try XML files to store the data in.
On Tue, 2004-03-02 at 23:44, Taj Morton wrote:
> Hello,
> I'm looking for a fast, open source database software (doesn't need to
> be
> relational, but ability to select with queries would be nice).
> However, it
> can't depend on a server. :(
>
> It needs to have a database that can look like this, kinda:
> | ID | Name | Version | Files |
> Deps |
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
---------------------
> | 1 | hello | 1.0 | /usr/bin/hello |
> hello_lib |
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
--------------------
>
> Also, it needs to have a good C/Pascal API.
> Any ideas on what I can do?
> Thanks,
> Taj
> --
> Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very
> funny--
> Did you ever try buying them without money?
> -- Ogden Nash
>
>
> To unsubscribe, email linux-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com, or visit
> http://www.yahoogroups.com.
>
>
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Yahoo! Groups Links
> * To visit your group on the web, go to:
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>
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>
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> Service.
>
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