June 2009 - Arch-general - lists.archlinux.org

[arch-general] Kompare
by richard terry 27 Jun '09

27 Jun '09

Still using kde3 and don't seem to have kompare on my disk. Not in the Archlinux or AUR packages, can one still get a kde3 package for arch? Regards Richard

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[arch-general] dmraid Partitions Lost - Recovered -> Howto
by David C. Rankin 26 Jun '09

26 Jun '09

List, I thought I would pass this along should anyone else experience a loss of all partitions on a drive or array. May help somebody out someday: dmraid Partition Loss with dmraid-1.0.0rc15 Testing dmraid-1.0.0rc15 on a box with two separate dmraid arrays, I experienced the total loss of all partitions on the second dmraid array. The first array held an openSuSE install running dmraid-1.0.0rc14 while the second held Archlinux with dmraid-1.0.0rc15 where testing was being done. All testing of dmraid-1.0.0rc15 on Archlinux went fine, the problem occurred when the machine was boot back into openSuSE. Regardless of the situation, whether using a raid setup or not, partition loss is serious business. dmraid Partition Recovery Recovery of dmraid partitions proceed in the same manner as recovering partitions from a singe drive. if you haven't destroyed the information on the array, you should be able to put the pieces of the puzzle back together again. The basic outline for the process is to locate and restore the partitions on the array and then reinstall the boot loader so your box is functional again. (Note: if you were smart enough to save the "fdisk -l" information for your drives, you can simply fdisk your array and be done) Tools Required Partition location and recovery software (I used testdisk) http://www.cgsecurity.org/ http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download http://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk-6.11.linux26.tar.bz2 Rescue CD for your OS (generally your install CD/DVD, or knoppix, etc.) Using testdisk testdisk is a great piece of GPL code written by Christophe Grenier. testdisk can be used with most operating systems and will scan you disk or array and locate partition boundaries and give you the opportunity to recover them. I had 4 partitions dedicated to my Archlinux install totaling roughly 70G on a 750G raid array. To start testdisk, for Linux26, you will untar the bzip archive and then cd into the linux subdirectory. The prebuilt binary is: ./testdisk_static The first thing you will need to do is set the correct disk geometry. In my case the disk reported 254 heads and needed to be changed to 255 heads to work properly. (This is recommended if the first Quick Scan doesn't find your partitions). After setting the geometry, just choose "Analyze" and "Quick Scan" and go get a coffee or something. In my case since the 70G I was using was at the front of the 750G array, it had found my partitions within 5 minutes or so. Once all of your partitions are found you can "Stop" the scan by hitting the return key. You are then presented with the list of found partitions. They will be initially labeled "D" for deleted and you simply toggle on the partitions you need to recover by selecting ("P" Primary, "*" Primary Boot, "L" Logical or leave as "D" for Deleted). testdisk will check your selections for partition overlap and give you confirmation in green if your partition layout is OK. Just hit return to continue. Don't worry about the extended partition boundary, it will be provided. Review the partitions to be recovered and choose "Write" and your are done. (a reboot is required to activate the partitions) If no partitions were found during the "Quick Scan", then (1) check your drive geometry setting; and (2) you will be given the option to do an "In Depth Scan" (go get 4 cups of coffee, walk the dog, etc...) Have Your Rescue CD Handy Once the partition information has been changed, there is a near 100% chance your boot loader configuration will be messed up. Don't worry, everything is still there, you just have to reinstall grub or lilo into the boot record to recover from the situation. Reinstalling Grub Here you will be booting from your CD or DVD into rescue mode, using dmraid to activate the arrays, and then using the information about the dm nodes in /dev/mapper and the partition information in from "cat /proc/partitions" to create a chroot of your install to repair the boot loader: (1) boot from the install DVD (2) choose "Rescue System", login as "root" (no password needed) (3) activate the dmraid arrays with "dmraid -ay" (4) check which device nodes to use to create the chroot with "ls -al /dev/dm*" or "ls -al /dev/mapper". I was dealing with 2 separate arrays, 9 partitions (duplicated by having both dmraid-1.0.0rc14 and dmraid-1.0.0rc15 metadata) that left me with dm-0 to dm-20 to deal with. Compare the size shown for dm-X, /dev/mapper/raiddevice_name and the size shown from "cat /proc/partitions" to determine your "/", "/home", and "/boot" and any other partitions you need to setup in your chroot. (5) mount all dm-X devices or /dev/mapper devices under /mnt to create your actual filesystem, and then bind dev/, proc/ and sys/ to their respective mount points under /mnt and chroot. **Note, you need to mount the device containing the / (root) filesystem first before mounting /boot and /home. Otherwise, the /boot and /home mount points will not exist: Example: mount /dev/dm-5 /mnt mount /dev/dm-7 /mnt/boot mount /dev/dm-6 /mnt/home mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev mount -o bind /proc /mnt/proc mount -o bind /sys /mnt/sys cd /mnt chroot /mnt (6) Reinstall grub to fix the mbr on your raid discs (mine were hd0 and hd1). See http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installing_with_Fake-RAID#Install_GRUB for my notes on getting the (hdX,Y) numbers right. When you start grub, you get a small ">" prompt, just use the following as a guide. If you only have a single array, you will only need to worry about setting up hd0: grub >root (hd0,4) >setup (hd0) >*** few lines of grub output *** >root (hd1,5) >setup (hd1) >*** more lines of grub output *** >quit (7) check your /etc/grub.conf to make sure it agrees with the way you have just configured grub. For the example above, it should look like this for hd0 (I boot to hd0 and then chainload to get to hd1 and the second array) setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 (hd0) (hd0,4) quit (8) exit (to exit chroot) and reboot, and if you were successful (or just damn lucky), your system will be 100% again. Now immediately do "fdisk -l" on each of your arrays and drives and save that information remotely so if this happens again, you have a shortcut;-) -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com

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[arch-general] libtorrent-rasterbar PKBUILD patch
by Damien Churchill 25 Jun '09

25 Jun '09

Here's a patch to upgrade the libtorrent-rasterbar package in extra. It's pretty simple, just increasing the pkgver to 0.14.4 and changing the md5sum. I've been using it for a number of weeks now without issue. Damien

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[arch-general] readline GPL violation on two pkgs?
by Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi 25 Jun '09

25 Jun '09

Hi, I just do a quick scan of soft linked with readline and I think that these two pkgs that are linked with readline violates GPL: extra/tftp-hpa community/ngspice Both have the "old" BSD (4-clause) license and is linked with readline that is GPL, so there is an incompatibility [#1] In the case of ngspice recomends to link with libedit to avoid legal issues [#2] Cheers, [#1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#OriginalBSD [#2] http://ngspice.sourceforge.net/relinfo.html -- Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi ( djgera ) http://www.djgera.com.ar KeyID: 0x1B8C330D Key fingerprint = 0CAA D5D4 CD85 4434 A219 76ED 39AB 221B 1B8C 330D

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[arch-general] Not able to do system updates
by Will Siddall 25 Jun '09

25 Jun '09

I don't know what happened, but overnight, my system doesn't seem to allow me to update or install packages. I tried with 'sudo pacman -Su' and with 'yaourt -Su' and nothing. I know of at least 10 packages that need to be updated from yesterday. And on further testing, I can't install new packages either. I want to try out the go-openoffice and oss packages, but it won't download. When I do an update though (yaourt -Sy), it does download the new package lists and the files in /var/lib/pacman are updated. Anything any of you might want me to try to figure this out, it'll be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Will

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[arch-general] sound busted after upgrade to kernel 2.6.30?
by Chris Brannon 25 Jun '09

25 Jun '09

My sound was busted yesterday when I upgraded from kernel 2.6.29 to 2.6.30. I had to regenerate my asound.state. At first, I thought it was just my problem, because I use the softvol plugin. This gave me trouble in the past. A friend of mine reported the same experience, so someone else had audio problems on upgrade as well. What happened to ALSA? Did anyone else have the same trouble? Regards, -- Chris

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[arch-general] HELP: dmraid-1.0.0rc15 in testing - Possible Bug: All Partitions are GONE??
by David C. Rankin 25 Jun '09

25 Jun '09

On Monday 22 June 2009 05:30:20 pm Heinz Mauelshagen wrote: > David, > > you can run "dmraid -an" after closing (e.g. unmounting) > nvidia_ecaejfdip9, which ain't work now any more, because you already > deleted the partition. It'll of course not reappear on reboot. > > "dmsetup remove nvidia_ecaejfdip9" will do the trick without a reboot. > > Regards, > Heinz > Heinz, I may have run into a bug with dmraid-1.0.0rc15, you may want to look at. Tobias (on the Arch list), you may want to look into this as well. I have included the new information at the end of tis message to try and keep the information in context: > On Mon, 2009-06-22 at 14:48 -0500, David C. Rankin wrote: > > Heinz, > > > > I thought I would forward this one to you just in case there is a bug on the > > delete. It is probably just my limited understanding of dmraid, but I thought > > after I deleted the partition in cfdisk and then deactivated the device > > (nvidia_ecaejfdi) node nvidia_ecaejfdip9 should disappear? It is still there. > > How do I get rid of it? This is on Archlinux. Here is a bit more info about my > > setup: > > > > [14:17 archangel:/home/david/archlinux/dmraid] # l /dev/mapper > > total 0 > > drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 2009-06-22 13:44 . > > drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 0 2009-06-22 13:44 .. > > crw-rw---- 1 root root 10, 60 2009-06-22 01:40 control > > brw------- 1 root disk 254, 0 2009-06-22 13:48 nvidia_ecaejfdi > > brw------- 1 root disk 254, 2 2009-06-22 01:40 nvidia_ecaejfdip5 > > brw------- 1 root disk 254, 3 2009-06-22 01:40 nvidia_ecaejfdip6 > > brw------- 1 root disk 254, 4 2009-06-22 01:40 nvidia_ecaejfdip7 > > brw------- 1 root disk 254, 5 2009-06-22 01:40 nvidia_ecaejfdip8 > > brw------- 1 root disk 254, 10 2009-06-22 13:44 nvidia_ecaejfdip9 > > (I have deleted this in cfdisk) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > > brw------- 1 root disk 254, 1 2009-06-22 01:40 nvidia_fdaacfde > > brw------- 1 root disk 254, 6 2009-06-22 01:40 nvidia_fdaacfdep5 > > brw------- 1 root disk 254, 7 2009-06-22 01:40 nvidia_fdaacfdep6 > > brw------- 1 root disk 254, 8 2009-06-22 01:40 nvidia_fdaacfdep7 > > brw------- 1 root disk 254, 9 2009-06-22 01:40 nvidia_fdaacfdep8 > > > > > > [14:13 archangel:/home/david/archlinux/dmraid] # dmraid -rd -v -v > > NOTICE: /dev/sdd: asr discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdd: ddf1 discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdd: hpt37x discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdd: hpt45x discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdd: isw discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdd: jmicron discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdd: lsi discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdd: nvidia discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdd: nvidia metadata discovered > > NOTICE: /dev/sdd: pdc discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdd: sil discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdd: via discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdc: asr discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdc: ddf1 discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdc: hpt37x discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdc: hpt45x discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdc: isw discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdc: jmicron discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdc: lsi discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdc: nvidia discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdc: nvidia metadata discovered > > NOTICE: /dev/sdc: pdc discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdc: sil discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdc: via discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdb: asr discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdb: ddf1 discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdb: hpt37x discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdb: hpt45x discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdb: isw discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdb: jmicron discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdb: lsi discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdb: nvidia discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdb: nvidia metadata discovered > > NOTICE: /dev/sdb: pdc discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdb: sil discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sdb: via discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sda: asr discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sda: ddf1 discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sda: hpt37x discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sda: hpt45x discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sda: isw discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sda: jmicron discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sda: lsi discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sda: nvidia discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sda: nvidia metadata discovered > > NOTICE: /dev/sda: pdc discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sda: sil discovering > > NOTICE: /dev/sda: via discovering > > INFO: RAID devices discovered: > > > > /dev/sdd: nvidia, "nvidia_ecaejfdi", mirror, ok, 1465149166 sectors, data@ 0 > > /dev/sdc: nvidia, "nvidia_fdaacfde", mirror, ok, 976773166 sectors, data@ 0 > > /dev/sdb: nvidia, "nvidia_ecaejfdi", mirror, ok, 1465149166 sectors, data@ 0 > > /dev/sda: nvidia, "nvidia_fdaacfde", mirror, ok, 976773166 sectors, data@ 0 > > [14:13 archangel:/home/david/archlinux/dmraid] # mc > > All was fine yesterday. Everything seemed to work well. Today, I am dead in the water and for some reason, all my partitions are gone from my Archlinux install with the new dmraid. Here is the problem: Today, I rebooted the Archlinux (hostname Archangel) install that is using dmraid-1.0.0rc15 the boot failed. Archlinux is running on nvidia_ecaejfdi (sdb/sdd - 2 500 Gig. Seagate Drives: ST3500630AS). However, when I booted to openSuSE 11.0 (hostname Ecstasy) running dmraid-1.0.0.rc14-63.1 sdb/sdd - 2 750 Gig. Seagate Drives: ST3750330AS), I lost all the nvidia_ecaejfdi devices and could not mount any of my archlinux partitions while running openSuSE. Here are the errors and information: 12:52 ecstasy:~> mount_arch Mounting 750G dmraid partitions under /mnt/arch mounting /dev/mapper/nvidia_ecaejfdi_part5 --> /mnt/arch/ mount: special device /dev/mapper/nvidia_ecaejfdi_part5 does not exist /mnt/arch/root/ -- Failed, Cancelling mount & exiting... (OK, I thought I just needed to adjust the mapper label to "ecaejfdip5" here. That wasn't the case) 12:52 ecstasy:~> l /dev/mapper total 0 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 200 2009-06-23 12:48 ./ drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4960 2009-06-23 12:49 ../ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 2009-06-23 12:48 control -> ../device-mapper brw------- 1 root root 253, 0 2009-06-23 12:48 nvidia_ecaejfdi brw------- 1 root root 253, 1 2009-06-23 12:48 nvidia_fdaacfde brw------- 1 root root 253, 2 2009-06-23 12:48 nvidia_fdaacfde_part1 brw------- 1 root root 253, 3 2009-06-23 12:48 nvidia_fdaacfde_part5 brw------- 1 root root 253, 4 2009-06-23 12:48 nvidia_fdaacfde_part6 brw------- 1 root root 253, 5 2009-06-23 12:48 nvidia_fdaacfde_part7 brw------- 1 root root 253, 6 2009-06-23 12:48 nvidia_fdaacfde_part8 12:53 ecstasy:~> su - Password: [12:53 ecstasy:~] # dmraid -ay RAID set "nvidia_ecaejfdi" already active RAID set "nvidia_fdaacfde" already active [12:53 ecstasy:~] # l /dev/mapper total 0 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 280 Jun 23 12:53 ./ drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 5040 Jun 23 12:54 ../ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 Jun 23 12:48 control -> ../device-mapper brw------- 1 root root 253, 0 Jun 23 12:48 nvidia_ecaejfdi brw------- 1 root root 253, 1 Jun 23 12:48 nvidia_fdaacfde brw------- 1 root root 253, 7 Jun 23 12:53 nvidia_fdaacfde5 brw------- 1 root root 253, 8 Jun 23 12:53 nvidia_fdaacfde6 brw------- 1 root root 253, 9 Jun 23 12:53 nvidia_fdaacfde7 brw------- 1 root root 253, 10 Jun 23 12:53 nvidia_fdaacfde8 brw------- 1 root root 253, 2 Jun 23 12:48 nvidia_fdaacfde_part1 brw------- 1 root root 253, 3 Jun 23 12:48 nvidia_fdaacfde_part5 brw------- 1 root root 253, 4 Jun 23 12:48 nvidia_fdaacfde_part6 brw------- 1 root root 253, 5 Jun 23 12:48 nvidia_fdaacfde_part7 brw------- 1 root root 253, 6 Jun 23 12:48 nvidia_fdaacfde_part8 You can see above that when booting opensuse with (dmraid-1.0.0.rc14-63.1), All nvidia_fdaacfde partitions have been "Duplicated". Once with a simple number '5-8' and again with the old style '_part5-_part8', -- and -- no partitions were created for "nvidia_ecaejfdi." Now this should not be happening. It is also confirmed with: 16:04 ecstasy:~> cat /proc/partitions major minor #blocks name 8 0 488386584 sda 8 1 1 sda1 8 5 72229 sda5 8 6 2104483 sda6 8 7 20972826 sda7 8 8 465234336 sda8 8 16 732574584 sdb 8 32 488386584 sdc 8 33 1 sdc1 8 37 72229 sdc5 8 38 2104483 sdc6 8 39 20972826 sdc7 8 40 465234336 sdc8 8 48 732574584 sdd 253 0 732574583 dm-0 253 1 488386583 dm-1 253 2 488384001 dm-2 253 3 72229 dm-3 253 4 2104483 dm-4 253 5 20972826 dm-5 253 6 465234336 dm-6 Now this is very scary looking. The sdb[5-8] and sdd[5-8] partitions are GONE?? (Bummer..) Obviously, I can no longer boot archlinux?? As I mentioned earlier, the Archlinux install on this box is just for testing and if there is no way to recover it, I'll just reinstall, but I would like to try and get it back. I have saved all the 'fdisk -l' information for the partitions and I might have the dmraid -D information around somewhere. One more potential culprit is the kernel update that was applied before I rebooted the machine: -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 35338866 2009-06-23 14:23 /var/cache/pacman/pkg/kernel26-2.6.30-5-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz I strongly suspect that is a player in this problem. So I need help from anyone on the Arch list or you Heinz or Tobias that might be able to suggest a way to recover from this problem. Any thoughts? -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com

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[arch-general] okular print preview error
by prad 25 Jun '09

25 Jun '09

when i try to do a print preview with okular i get a dialogbox saying it couldn't open an okular.ps file in /tmp. this is weird too because the file has rw permissions for the user. suggestions? -- In friendship, prad ... with you on your journey Towards Freedom http://www.towardsfreedom.com (website) Information, Inspiration, Imagination - truly a site for soaring I's

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Re: [arch-general] [arch-dev-public] [idea] global link database for all packages
by Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi 24 Jun '09

24 Jun '09

Pierre Schmitz wrote: > Hi, > > I just got an idea which might be worth to think about. Namcap is quite useful > but due to its limitation of only seeing a certain pkg file at a time it > cannot answer all questions. > > The idea is to create a database (similar to the file list we already create) > which includes lists of files and to which they are linked. <snip> Hi, Some times ago I sended to the list this: http://github.com/djgera/pkgdyn For the database output and output usable data: http://archlinux.djgera.com.ar/pkgdyn http://archlinux.djgera.com.ar/pkgdyn/out/i686/core.the-BIG-dependency-fami… -- Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi ( djgera ) http://www.djgera.com.ar KeyID: 0x1B8C330D Key fingerprint = 0CAA D5D4 CD85 4434 A219 76ED 39AB 221B 1B8C 330D

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[arch-general] KDE4.3 Beta - Rocks, still a bit rough, but very usable as a primary desktop
by David C. Rankin 24 Jun '09

24 Jun '09

Listmates, Having been a leading pessimist of KDE4 since a crippled 4.04 was dumped on the openSuSE community on 11.0 and then more disappointment dumped again with kde 4.1 in 11.1, I have been skeptical if the desktop, which from first looks was something developed by teenagers on way too much Jolt Soda, would ever get to a usable state. Well for the past week I took the plunge again with openSuSE's 4.3Beta1 1- click install on my spare drive, and ... I never thought I would type these words, but I like it! It is more than usable as a primary desktop. That's not to say it doesn't still need a lot of tlc, but the bugs are largely run of the mill bugs that just need cleanup and aren't showstoppers. One of my biggest bitches has been the fish_kio functionality and the inability to connect to boxes across the internet (fish over lan worked). Well, fish over the internet isn't broken, it's just really screwed up! What that means is that you can actually get fish to connect to a remote box (you just have to repeatedly try the same connection 3-25 times have it connect- crash-disconnect until it actually succeeds in connecting and establishing a session for the first time) The upside? Once you establish the connection to your remote host the first time, fish will re-connect to it as usual. No kidding. Why it craters after connecting and before a fish session is established the on the first 3-25 times is still up in the air, as well as why it continues to work just fine after that... but it does. I have given kde4 on heck of a shakedown and added 15 or so new, along with a couple of old, bugs to bugs.kde.org. Here is a short list of the bugs from the shakedown of kde4 in the past few days (just add the "ID" at the end of: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id= if you want the details) ID Summary 195247 KDE4.3beta1 knotes causes SegFault in Kontact 195259 kmail "message structure" needs show/hide button 195505 Composer Standard Templates Defaults Not Reset After Default Pressed & OK 195635 Konqueror "Tabbed Browsing" Settings Do Not Take Effect until Restart 195808 File Manager Does Not Restore Saved Profile 195697 F8 (show hidden files) Requires Manual Focus on File List 158985 kbattleship freezes when attempting to join lan game 195528 Detail View: Clicking in space between File/Folder name and Size fails to place Focus 195533 kmail: No indication shown for Unread Messages in Collapsed Thread 195343 New sub-basket does not respect color scheme 195623 Basket Groups Not Expanded and Systray Icon Won't Restore Basket App 195489 Organization should be Formatted Name if no Family or Given present 195493 Groupware Integration Authentication Fails after Session Timeout 195523 "Formatted Name" Listbox needs to be accessible outside "Edit Name" subform 195367 fish_kio Fails in kde4.3 for konqueror, kate, kwrite, etc.. 176599 Wish - KfontViewer needs 'next->file' 'previous->file' and 'mark/tag' features 189583 Ability to add submenu "like editors" to kicker panel from classic menu If you have been staying away from kde4 until it was "usable" (as I was), well, "It's Usable!" in 4.3 Beta. The more users that take the plunge now and find the little snafus in their favorite apps and bug it to bugs.kde.org, the quicker it will be "Cleanly Usable" Now all I have to do is figure out how to get 4.3 Beta loaded on my Arch drive and I'll be golden! Seriously, I thought I would load kde4, see what had improved and be disappointed again, probably trash my elegant kde3 install with cross-configuration issues in the process, and have to dump the drive and reinstall. Was I ever pleasantly surprised. If you have been in the same holding-pattern lately in your thinking about kde4 as well -- I bet you will be pleasantly surprised as well ;-) Thank God .. There is hope for KDE4 after all! P.S. To really see the desktop effects as they should be, you need to adjust the "Animation duration" to something that is reasonable for your hardware (it is set to a terrible default for any newer hardware) In kde control center > appearance > desktop effects (then in the individual effect settings) try a setting of about 250ms and go up (most likely) or down by 50ms at a time until the effects smooth out and look right. 250-280ms worked fine on my laptop. I suspect the default is off by a factor of 10 from its intended setting which makes the effects look jerky and crude compared to the compiz effect they were based on. (the default is probably 25ms when it was intended to be 250ms) Anyway, it sure make the effects look much better. The kde4 desktop effects still don't compare to the equivalent compiz effects and there is no equivalent to certain compiz effects I really like (Expo, etc.), but what is there looks pretty darn good for KDE4 all things considered. Give it a go... Now where can I get 4.3 Beta for Arch? or at least a good howto on how to download the build dependencies needed to build from source. I'll check the wiki ;-) -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com

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