CentOS

Why I insist on having so many operating systems on the desktop computer is beyond me. Not enough time for all of them. This time I've installed CentOS 5 on my old ThinkPad R32. I've done a full update via yum. Now I'm off to fight a screen resolution issue. I can only get 800x600 but should be able to bring this up to 1024x768.

Conky
Display
FlashPlugin
Repositories
Wireless

Display Issues

Guess I win. The command system-config-display --reconfig seems to have done the trick for the screen resolution, at least until I reboot.

Nope. Back to 800x600 after a reboot. Changing the driver from radeon to vesa. Let's see what happens.

Well, it looks like 1024x768 but it's not full screen. What's up with that?

I win! Don't really know how I fixed it but it's fixed. 1024x768. A triumph and a hard fought battle. Here's the xorg.conf. 

# Xorg configuration created by system-config-display

Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier     "single head configuration"
        Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
        InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Keyboard0"
        Driver      "kbd"
        Option      "XkbModel" "pc105"
        Option      "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"

 ### Comment all HorizSync and VertSync values to use DDC:
        Identifier   "Monitor0"
        ModelName    "LCD Panel 1024x768"
 ### Comment all HorizSync and VertSync values to use DDC:
        HorizSync    31.5 - 48.0
        VertRefresh  56.0 - 65.0
        Option      "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Videocard0"
        #Driver      "radeon"
        Driver      "vesa"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Screen0"
        Device     "Videocard0"
        Monitor    "Monitor0"
        DefaultDepth     24
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     24
                Modes     "1024x768"
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Optional yum repositories

Setup rpmforge repository. First install the repository rpm file. 

sudo rpm -ivh http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/i386/RPMS.dag/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
Password: 
Retrieving http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/i386/RPMS.dag/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
warning: /var/tmp/rpm-xfer.upEdyq: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 6b8d79e6
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:rpmforge-release       ########################################### [100%]

Get the GPG key. 

sudo rpm --import http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/RPM-GPG-KEY.dag.txt

The rpmforge repository is now set up and available for use. Slowest fucking repository I've ever used!

RPMFusion

For CentOS setting up the rpmfusion repositories is a two step process. Apparently you need to enable something called epel. 

EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) is a volunteer-based community effort from the Fedora project to create a repository of high-quality add-on packages that complement the Fedora-based Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and its compatible spinoffs, such as CentOS and Scientific Linux.

As part of the Fedora packaging community, EPEL packages are 100% free/libre open source software (FLOSS).

Step 1 and 2. 

su -c 'rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-3.noarch.rpm'
su -c 'rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/el/updates/testing/5/i386/rpmfusion-free-release-5-0.1.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/el/updates/testing/5/i386/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-5-0.1.noarch.rpm'

Done. The EPEL and RPMFusion repositories are now enabled.

Flash Plugin

sudo yum install flash-plugin

Conky

sudo yum install conky

Copy the files .ck.sh and .conky.rc from one computer to another and customize them to fit the ThinkPad. Works well :D

Trying to get wireless working

Wireless adapter is Intersil Corporation Prism 2.5 Wavelan chipset (rev 01) on the old ThinkPad R32.

Right now I can't connect to my wireless access point. It tries but no dice. Also, no access point actually shows as available when I click the network icon in the top panel and Wireless Networks is greyed out. The only way I can even try connecting is if I choose Connect to Hidden Wireless Network. 

[glenn@centos5laptop ~]$ cat /var/log/dmesg |grep wifi
hostap_pci: Registered netdevice wifi0
wifi0: Original COR value: 0x0
wifi0: NIC: id=0x8013 v1.0.0
wifi0: PRI: id=0x15 v1.1.0
wifi0: STA: id=0x1f v1.4.2
wifi0: defaulting to host-based encryption as a workaround for firmware bug in Host AP mode WEP
wifi0: defaulting to bogus WDS frame as a workaround for firmware bug in Host AP mode WDS
wifi0: Warning: secondary station firmware version 1.4.2 does not seem to work in Host AP mode
wifi0: Intersil Prism2.5 PCI: mem=0xf8000000, irq=11
wifi0: registered netdevice wlan0

No luck yet. Here's what I have. 

[root@centos5laptop glenn]# /sbin/iwconfig eth1
eth1      IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:"flintstone"  Nickname:"centos5laptop"
          Mode:Master  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 00:20:E0:8E:87:17   
          Bit Rate:11 Mb/s   Sensitivity=1/3  
          Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:232  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:512   Missed beacon:0

Next. 

wget http://downloads.wicd.net/pkgs/stable/1.6.x/1.6.2/CentOS_5/wicd-1.6.2-2.1.i386.rpm
yum install redhat-rpm-config urwid
rpm -ivh wicd-1.6.2-2.1.i386.rpm

Off to screw with WICD. And back to say "that didn't work".

Return home

CentOS (last edited 2009-11-17 00:41:28 by GlennJohnson)