While I’m very comfortable with the mysql command line client, I do switch to the GUI query browser to add/edit stored procedures/functions.

“yum install mysql-gui-tools” was the simplest command to install the GUI tools for MySQL in Fedora Linux. But in Fedora 13, this results in “No package mysql-gui-tools available”.

So what happened here?

Why Fedora 13 repositories don’t have mysql-gui-tools package ?
The reason for this is explained in a bug report here. In a nutshell, the explanation is, the MySQL GUI tools is purposely removed from the Fedora 13 repositories because they have been buggy! Fair enough – it has crashed on me many a times.

But what is the alternative? The thread in the bug report suggests that it will be replaced with MySQL Workbench. That’s great! MySQL Workbench has many more features. So now can I issue a ‘yum-install mysql-workbench’ to have it installed on Fedora 13? The answer is no. This is because the bug report sums up with the following note:

mysql-workbench has not finished its review yet.  this is due to the enormous
amount of work needed as the mysql team follows lots of bad practices.

Until we can cleanly and sanely package mysql-workbench there will be nothing
available on fedora. 

The above reply is dated June 17, 2010. A 'no release date' left me desperate to look around (google).

The solution
There is always a solution and Google leads us to it. In a nutshell, I installed MySQL Workbench  from the Remi repository. A quick install of MySQL Workbench, on Fedora 13, is as follows:

• Login as root
• Open a terminal window in GNOME/KDE or switch to the command line
• Issue the command:
  rpm –import http://rpms.famillecollet.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-remi
• Next, issue the command:
  yum install http://rpms.famillecollet.com/remi-release-13.rpm
• Open the file named remi.repo, found in the directory /etc/yum.repos.d, in a text editor (say vi) and change line no. 5 from:
  enabled=0 to enabled=1
  This will enable the [remi] repository.
• Finally issue:
  yum install mysql-workbench
  to install MySQL Workbench on Fedora 13.

Henceforth, MySQL Workbench can be launched via a terminal window by issuing mysql-workbench or it can be found under Applications >Programming in GNOME.

For the Website project, I built a View to show the recent blog posts along with their title, author, post date and the number of comments. All looked fine expect the comments. It pinched me to see “0 comments”, in the View, against the posts, which did not have a comment. Ideally, the View should have  hidden the comments count or displayed an alternate text like “Write a comment”. Further, I didn’t want to theme the comment count for each individual View. This is because I had many such Views across the site. I desired a global fix to the “0 comment” case. The solution turned out to be quite simple and is as follows:

Save the following code in a file named views-view-field–comment-count.tpl.php in the theme’s directory -  <drupal-dir>/themes/<your-theme> . Please note the double hyphen (–) between “field” and “comment”, in the file name:

<?php

$zeroCommentText="0 comment(s)";

if(stristr($output,$zeroCommentText))
  $output="";

echo $output;

?>

The above code assumes that you have setup the View to display the comment count as “N comment(s)”. Here N is the number of comments. Change the $zeroCommentText variable to suit your display. The above code will not display the comment count when it is zero or no comments.

Following is the modified code, in case, you want to display some text, say, “Write a comment” in place of “0 comment(s)”:

<?php

$zeroCommentText="0 comment(s)";
$replaceWith = "Write a comment";   

if(stristr($output,$zeroCommentText))
  $output = str_ireplace($zeroCommentText,$replaceWith,$output);  

echo $output;

?>

Modify the $replaceWith variable, with the alternate text that you want to display for zero or no comments. Drupal Views rocks!!!

In the meanwhile, issue the following commands in your Fedora 11 (32 bit) box to upgrade to the final release of Firefox. Note that we are installing the required packages from the Koji repository:

1. rpm -Uvh http://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/packages/nspr/4.8/1.fc11/i586/nspr-4.8-1.fc11.i586.rpm
2. rpm -Uvh http://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/packages/xulrunner/1.9.1/2.fc11/i586/xulrunner-1.9.1-2.fc11.i586.rpm
3. rpm -Uvh http://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/packages/firefox/3.5/1.fc11/i586/firefox-3.5-1.fc11.i586.rpm

The above RPMs will need to be installed in the same order. If you are using 64 bit Fedora or are on other architecture (like ppc), download and install the packages named nspr, xulrunner and firefox from the following web pages:

• nspr: http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=112313
• xulrunner: http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=112385
• firefox: http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=112334

Eventually these packages will be pushed and available through the official Fedora mirrors., but till that time, enjoy!

Update (July 5, 2009): Firefox 3.5 Final has been available from the Fedora 11 repositories, as I mentioned a few days back. A simple ‘yum update firefox’ will do the update to the final version on Fedora 11. This makes the above content outdated.

Fired the torrent as well as direct download. The latter because, saw only one peer @ 98.7% download. Let’s see who, direct or the torrent download, wins the race on my 2 Mbps connection at home. The torrent download is not giving me more than 3KBps whereas the direct download is dicey and swinging – at times from about 260 KBps to 40 KBps

Once downloaded I have to start thinking about backing up my laptop running Fedora 9 and installing the 10. This may happen tonight, if sleep does not take over the X.

Will update this post as I sail to X from IX.

And now (Nov 27, 2008 @ 16:30 IST), my laptop runs Fedora 10 Continuing to write from Fedora 10, about it. Following is the first glimpse, with the noteworthy new wallpaper,  of Fedora 10’s desktop, after the installation:

Fedora 10 Desktop

Installation
Didn’t find anything strikingly new in the installation. But worth mentioning is about ext4 filesystem. Fedora 9 started supporting this new filesystem. I skipped using ext4 on Fedora 9 fearing that it is relatively new. With Fedora 10, I decided to go with it. But seems ext4 is still getting a newbie treatment. While partitioning ext4 does not show up until you type it in as a boot option.

That is, while booting from the Fedora 10 DVD, select “Install or upgrade an existing system” from the boot menu, press tab and append ext4 to the boot options such that the boot options look as follows:

vmlinuz initrd=initrd.img ext4

But then I got struck with a doubt while doing a custom partitioning. I recalled that when I used ext4 in Fedora 9 (just to experiment), I was not able to boot into the system because Grub (the Linux boot loader) did not like ext4 (/boot was ext4). I wondered whether this problem still existed with Fedora 10. Quick and impatient browsing did not help. So I decided to select ext4 even for the /boot partition, expecting that I may face a crash after installation. But thanks to Fedora 10’s installer. It prompted me (unlike Fedora 9) to not to use ext4 for the boot partition.

Bottom line: Don’t use ext4 for /boot or the boot partition. Those who are not in a habit to create a separate /boot partition will now have to create one, if they want to use ext4 for the root (/) partition.

Remaining installation was typical Fedora like. I was expecting but did not find Netbeans during the package/software selection. Hoping that it will be available separately from the Fedora repositories.

Booting: The Wow Factor
After installation and during the boot up, we see the Fedora 10’s WOW Factor. Unlike most Linux distributions, including Fedora < 10, no cryptic text saying “booting kernel”, “starting udev” etc. A straight jump to a graphical boot with a progress bar. Is this the Wow factor? No. Can’t explain it without a video While booting the animation of the shooting blue flairs from the blue Sun is really Wow. Thanks to the new boot system so called Plymouth. Following are the links to some YouTube videos which showcase the magnificent, new, animated boot screen:

Plymouth Solar Theme in Action

I think it is really a good move to hide those cryptic boot time messages. It scares a newbie and sometimes even me when I once saw a message as follows:

“Memory for crash kernel (0×0 to 0×0) not within permissible range”

during the boot process of CentOS Linux. Upon read up, this message was claimed to be harmless despite talking about “crash kernel” Similarly it may be unnecessary to show the plethora of boot time messages, especially to a newbie and Fedora 10 does it well and even better with Plymouth. But, alas, shutdown of Fedora 10 still shows system messages on the screen.

As customary to Fedora, after the boot, I was greeted by the First Boot screen where I could setup a non-root user account, amongst others.

Finally I was dropped on the GNOME desktop (as shown in the screenshot above) and was greeted by 49 pending updates! This is something which used to surprise me before but humours me now, with all Fedoras. It has been just a day or two since the release of Fedora 10 and about 50 pending updates!. Either the releases are deadline driven or the Fedora community is indeed quite active. Anyways, being a long time Fedora user, this is just a rant.

Note: Fedora 10 does not even show the Grub menu while booting. As per Fedora 10’s release notes, the Grub menu is shown only if you have a dual boot (say with Windows and Fedora 10). Yet, to see the Grub menu, press any key after powering on your computer.

Internet Connection Sharing with Windows Mobile
One of the most talked about set of enhancements in Fedora 10 are those in the NetworkManager – a graphical applet which manages wired and wireless connection. One of the enhancements in NetworkManager is the connection sharing via WiFi ad-hoc which I will test and write about later.

This para is devoted to how easily I was able to connect my Windows Mobile (I-Mate Ultimate 8502 running Windows Mobile 6.0) via USB and was able to browse through its EDGE connection. One of the advantages of using USB to using Bluetooth is, the mobile keeps charging via USB while serving the Internet connection.

The general case is, if you are on the move and do not have access to an Internet connection (wired or WiFi), then one of the best ways is to connect your laptop via your GPRS/EDGE enabled mobile phone or PDA.

In Fedora 9, I could not get NetworkManager to work as easily for connection sharing with my mobile. I had to compile drivers (usb-rndis-lite), write configuration files and connect to the mobile from the commandline.

But with Fedora 10, its a breeze. Connect the mobile via USB, start “Internet Sharing” on the mobile and voila, you are connected! To launch “Internet Sharing” via USB on Windows Mobile 6, launch Start>Programs>Internet Sharing. Select “USB” from the “PC Connection” dropdown and for Network Connection, select your pr-configured GPRS/EDGE connection – “HUTCH (WEB)” in my case. Click on Connect. In seconds NetworkManager applet on the top right GNOME panel will show as connected to the mobile. Jet, set, browse!

Note: There are forum posts across the web which suggests to try permutations like click on the Connect (on the mobile) before connecting the mobile via USB or click on Connect after connecting the USB cable. I tried both and always found it to connect. Bottom line: whichever way, you should get connected instantly.

To be continued…

Chrome Package (for Chrome look and feel)
Speed Dial (Chrome like most visited site)
Distrust (Private browsing or Incognito)

To download Chrome Package, you will need to register and login. After downloading, installing the add-ons and restarting Firefox, you will be greeted by the Chromified Firefox. Note that, in the “Chromified Firefox” screenshot, I have hidden the Firefox toolbars (like Google, Bookmark and other toolbars) to make Firefox look alike as much as Chrome

Note that these add-ons make Firefox look similar and function partially like Chrome. Do not expect the same look and feel and exact functionality/features.

Chrome Package
This add-ons brings in the Chrome look and feel to Firefox. Note the tabs going above the location bar, change of icons and the + icon besides the latest tab to open a new tab.
Windows Vista users can try the Total ReChrome addon, instead of Chrome Package. This add-on requires another add-on called Chromifox to be pre-installed. I found it while searching for Chrome add-ons and I haven’t tried it myself. This add-on does not work in Linux.

Speed Dial
This add-on shows the most visited site when a new Firefox window or tab is opened. After a Firefox restart, Speed Dial’s configuration pops up. On this, I checked/selected the following options:

• Load in blank new windows
• Load in blank new tabs
• Set Speed Dial as home page

Note that unlike Google Chrome, Speed Dial does not automatically display the most visited site. You will need to bookmark your favourite sites via Bookmarks>Set as Speed Dial.

Distrust
This facilitates the private browsing or the Incognito mode in Chrome. You may like to read about its functionality here. It displays an “eye” like icon on the right side of the Firefox’s status bar. Clicking on the icon shows a green tick and starts the private browsing. From here on, any URL visits, form fillups, download history etc, are not stored. Note that, in Chrome the private browsing is started by launching a new window called the Incognito window. Hence Distrust gives similar features but not the same functionality.

I found the first two by searching for “chrome” on the Firefox add-on site. Found Distress by searching for “private browsing”. If you are able to find more, let me know

• Which can work on Linux (on my Fedora 9 laptop)
• Using which backing up files is quick – as easy as drag-n-drop or copy-n-paste (else I will be lazy to back up)
• Free
• Atleast a GB of space (if not more)

Optionally:

• To be able to access the files from anywhere
• To be able access the files using my laptop, home desktop and office desktop running Windows/Linux
• Offline access to files (for those rare occasions when I’m not connected to the Internet)

I checked out Xdrive, Adrive, Gmail Drive and Live Mesh but none of these fit my mandatory requirements. Xdrive and Live Mesh are Windows only. Adrive’s WebDav access is paid. Gmail Drive (tried using fuse-gmailfs on Fedora) was erratic.

The solution that worked for me was Dropbox – 2 GB free space, works on Linux and drag-n-drop online storage. Dropbox is also available for Windows and Mac OS, besides Linux

Dropbox installation on Linux:

1. Goto www.getdropbox.com
2. Click on “Download Dropbox” link
3. You may see a list of Dropbox installer(s) for your operating system (in case of Windows, a .exe installer is downloaded automatically).
   In my case (when I accessed from my Laptop running Fedora 9) I saw RPMs for Fedora 9, Deb for Ubuntu and the Dropbox source. I opted for Fedora Core 9 (x86).
4. This RPM installs a Nautilus plugin/extension for Dropbox.
5. After installing this RPM, logout and re-login or reboot your computer.
6. You will see a Dropbox plugin icon on the GNOME (I use GNOME in Fedora 9) panel.
7. Wait for sometime for plugin to download the Dropbox application.
8. Henceforth, a wizard will be launched. Follow the wizard to create a Dropbox account
9. Once done, the Dropbox folder will be launched, as shown below. To this folder, you can drag-n-drop files to sync – with the online storage.

Dropbox folder

A blue icon besides the folders indicate that the folders and the files in them are not yet synced. After a couple of minutes, the folder and files are synced with some sample files and images from Dropbox. Upon sync the icon changes to green as shown below:

Fully synced Dropbox folder

You can drag-n-drop or copy-n-paste any file or folder to the Dropbox folder and after a while they will sync with the online storage. Since the Dropbox folder is a normal folder like any other folder/directory on Linux, you can edit files in place and the changed files will sync back to the online storage.

The Dropbox folder is created under your home directory (.e.g. /home/shekhar/Dropbox). It can also be launched by clicking on the Dropbox icon on the panel.

One nuisance though. Once installed, Dropbox is enabled for all the users (Linux user accounts). Hence when you login into the system as a different user you will again get to see the Dropbox wizard which can’t be closed. It will popup again, if closed. The way out seems to be to follow and complete the wizard even if that user account will not be using Dropbox.

My usage of Dropbox is limited to the above. I drag-n-drop important files (largely documents) into the Dropbox folder so that I have a reliable (I hope) online backup.

Following is an overview of other features of Dropbox which I’m not using, currently:

Public and Photos Folder

A file in the Public folder can be accessed by anyone who has a URL to the file. You can send a URL by right clicking on a file in the public folder and selecting Dropbox>Copy public link. Henceforth you can paste and send the link to someone who can in turn download the file.

Folders with images dropped in the Dropbox’s Photos folder can become an online album.

Versioning

All files in the Dropbox are versioned. You can right click on a file, select Dropbox>Revisions to see the earlier versions of the file. This will take you to the Getdropbox.com website, in your account. You can restore an earlier version of a file by clicking on the Restore link.

You can even see and restore deleted files by login to your Dropbox account online.

Sharing

You can share files in the non-Public folders (not files) by right clicking on them and selecting Dropbox>Share. This will open a Getdropbox.com webpage. Here you can send E-mail invitations to people with whom you want to share the folders. The invitees will be able to access the folder by downloading Dropbox or via Getdropbox.com

The Dropbox FAQ is a must read to understand its features.

Update (November 3, 2008): Updated to DropBox 0.5.0 for Fedora 9 via updating the RPM. The version that I had been using was 0.4.1. After reboot, I had to right click and start DropBox by clicking on “Start Dropbox”. This was not required in the earlier version.

Hmm, upon the second reboot, I did not have to right click to start DropBox. I’m confused. As of now, will settle down to, all is well that ends well

Update (November 19, 2009): Dropbox works on Fedora 12 (Constantine). Here is how I installed it and made it work:

• Had set SELinux in Permissive mode using the GNOME applet called SELinux Administration (System>Administration>SELinux Management). You may also opt to set it to Disabled, instead of Permissive.
• Downloaded and installed the Fedora 10 RPM from https://www.dropbox.com/download?dl=packages/nautilus-dropbox-0.6.1-1.fc10.i386.rpm. Note that this is the 32-Bit RPM
• After installation, logged out and again logged into GNOME as a non-root user. Did not find a Dropbox icon on the panel (at the top right, by default).
• Opened a terminal window (console) in GNOME and issued the following:

  dropbox start -i 

• This started downloading Dropbox and upon download, displayed the configuration wizard. Followed the on-screen instructions which prompted me for my Dropbox account credentials, location of Dropbox folder etc.
• Upon subsequent logins, found Dropbox icon on the panel.
• If Dropbox does not connect (i.e. when you do not see a green tick on the icon), right click on the icon and select “Stop Dropbox”. Next open a terminal window and type:

  dropbox start 

• It works!

Fennec Alpha 1 is available only for Nokia N810 tablets running Maemo. But I own a Windows Mobile. Fortunately, Fennec is downloadable for Windows, Linux and Mac desktops – for users (like me) to see its glimpse, test it and give feedback.

I downloaded the Linux version from here. Extracted the archive (tar -jxvf fennec-1.0a1.en-US.linux-i686.tar.bz2). This produced a directory named fennec.  Changed to this directory and launched Fennec by issuing ./fennec.

Fennec - The first launch

With the aim not being a full fledged review of Fennec (since it is in alpha), following are a few noteworthy features:

Awesome bar: Like Firefox 3, Fennec shows the earlier visited sites as you start typing in a URL. It shows the URL and title of the sites. This allows you to quickly jump to the URL without much typing:

Awesome Bar

Optimizes Website’s dimension: Seems Fennec tries its best to horizontally fit a web page to the viewable area. A website can be scrolled vertically by dragging the mouse from bottom to top.  Following is how my Blog looks in Fennec:

Shekhar Govindarajan's Blog in Fennec

Tab browsing: As hinted on the first launch screen, drag the mouse, to the right, on the Fennec window and you will see the tabs panel. It shows the preview of all the currently open tabs as shown below:

Tabbed browsing in Fennec

You can launch a new tab by clicking on the + button or remove a launched tab by clicking on the – button on the tab preview. Fennec automatically launches a separate tab for links which open in a new Window.

Back, forward and favourite buttons: Dragging the mouse towards the left reveals the typical web browser button for Back, Previous and Bookmark/Favourites.

Drag the mouse to the left to see the typical web browsing buttons

Configuration/Preferences: Clicking on the wheel button (at the bottom), shown in the above screenshot, reveals the browser’s configuration or preferences option. But I was not able to select or change any option. Either I’m doing something wrong or it is the Alpha factor.

The preferences window

Remember password: Fennec showcases the same non-intrusive remember password prompt – as in Firefox 3 and Google Chrome. The remember password prompt is displayed on the top without stopping the subsequent (to the login) page from opening:

Remember password prompt

I browsed through GMail (non mobile version) using Fennec and found it to working fine. This means Fennec will be supporting JavaScript and AJAX intensive sites.

Miscellaneous:

• Fennec claims to support plugins and addons with several plugins like that for Java, Quicktime and DivX listed. But even after enabling them I could not see Java applets or Quicktime videos.
• It seems to remember the data filled in form fields too and displays a small popup above the fields to assist in prefilling
• Flash based websites did not work. There were no Flash plugins listed
• While not a Fennec’s issue, Websites (like mine) are not detecting Fennec as a mobile browser. The user agent string emitted by Fennec (while running on a Linux desktop) is as follows:
  

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1b2pre) Gecko/20081015 Fennec/1.0a1

Note that Fennec is not the first mobile browser from Mozilla. Earlier Mozilla had released a web browser called Minimo. Minimo is now found in the Mozilla archives. This means Fennec is the way forward. I had used Minimo on my earlier mobile which was a Windows Pocket PC (running Windows Mobile 2003). Minimo also supports tab browsing.

Fennec is said to use the Firefox’s design principles and the Gecko engine and hence I’m calling it the Firefox for mobiles. I’m not sure if Fennec and Firefox share the same code base.

Last but not the least, I played with Fennec on a Linux laptop with a mouse, keyword and a large screen. How well it works with a phone’s input and output devices can be told by someone who owns a Nokia tablet. It will also be interesting to see how the future versions of Fennec behave on smaller screens of mobile phones and PDAs.

Waiting eagerly for the WIndows Mobile version of Fennec …

Earlier I had been converting Office 2007 on Linux command line using OdfConverter as per the instructions at http://www.oooninja.com/2008/01/convert-openxml-docx-etc-in-linux-using.html.

Today saw Ubuntu Linux opening Office 2007 files in OpenOffice 2.4. I have been using Fedora (as of this writing I’m running Fedora 9) on my laptop.Definitely there had to be something similar, for OpenOffice 2.4 in Fedora 9.

Found it at the following URL: http://katana.oooninja.com/w/odf-converter-integrator

1. Fedora users can install the RPMs from http://katana.oooninja.com/f/software/odf-converter-integrator-0.1.5-1.i386.rpm
2. Once this RPM is installed, double clicking any Office 2007 file will open the corresponding file in OpenOffice.

How it works

1. It basically registers a script – a python script – called odf-converter-integrator (found in /usr/bin directory) which is associated with the MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) types of Office 2007 files.
2. This script uses the same OdfConverter binary which I used before and converts the Office 2007 file on the fly.

Shortcomings

1. While this will open an Office 2007 file using double click, you cannot open an Office 2007 file using File->Open in OpenOffice.
2. Don’t expect to be able to save the file in Office 2007 format. You will have to choose one of the OpenOffice supported file formats (like ODT, DOC, ODS, XLS, ODP, PPT etc.).

Update (Oct 20, 2008): The convertor documents do not show SmartArt (if used) in the Office 2007 files, not even as an embedded image.

I have myself done two comprehensive SRS (System Requirement Specification) documents – about 50 pages in length and full of UI diagrams – using OpenOffice Draw. The connectors, the basic shapes and  numerous the export options (or file formats) are all indispensable. But what was missing was a clipart of common shapes and elements.

I myself made tini-mini ODG files (OpenOffice Draw files) for combo boxes, dialog boxes and scrollbars, and re-used them in my diagrams.

Then, discovered this link to Custom OO shapes. Downloaded the .odg fies from this page and opened them in OpenOffice Draw Following is the screenshot of basic UI (user interface) elements like windows, dropdowns, frames, buttons, checkboxes etc.

Custom OO Shapes - GUI Elements and Controls

The way you can use them is:

1. Open the downloaded .odg files in OpenOffice Draw
2. Select the shape/component/element
3. Copy and paste the shape in your own diagram
4. Edit the shape – for example, change the label of the button from “OK” to “DONE”

Do not expect:

1. A Visio like, always accessible, sidebar/menu links to the clipart.
2. Colorful shapes

• Microsoft Biztalk: Jitterbit
• Microsoft Commerce Server: osCommerce
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM: SugarCRM
• Microsoft Exchange Server: Zimbra
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server: Alfresco