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Mepis Tips

A Multiple Desktop tip.

Submitted by Anonymous on May 21, 2010 - 6:05pm

Firstly, to set up your multiple desktops, see this guide

Once you've got that done, you can open an application and right click on it's title bar. Go to Advanced>Special Application Settings and put a check in Desktop. You can then choose various options like forcing the application to stay on which ever desktop you'd prefer etc. This is especially handy for stopping your web browser from jumping from desktop to desktop when you click a link in an email or similar.

How to ensure your server is reasonably secure and allow SSH logins from the internet.

Submitted by Anonymous on January 15, 2010 - 4:50pm

OpenSSH logo

Here's a pretty simple but reasonably effective way to let remote (Internet) users logon to your computer using SSH. The target audience for this is the slightly more advanced user who knows their way around a bit and is comfortable editing config files.

beryl cube

Submitted by Anonymous on November 20, 2009 - 5:43am

Unexpectedly large number of available updates.

Submitted by rich_c on February 15, 2009 - 11:06pm

With Debian Lenny being promoted to Stable, people may well be noticing an alarming number of available upgrades if they are still using Mepis 7. To solve this issue and prevent potentially breaking your system start up Synaptic, go into settings and amend the list of repositories to specify etch or oldstable instead of stable.

It's probably worth Mepis 8 users checking their settings too and ensuring they're happy with what their sources list is pointing to.

Retaining old /home directories with a fresh install/upgrade.

Submitted by rich_c on January 30, 2009 - 6:04am

Old home

When doing an install and selecting the option(s) to retain old /home directories you may run into permissions problems when you create a new user and tell Mepis to use the old home directory for the new username. Here's how I fixed it.

Here, I've created a new user name that matches the old /home directory. Using the Mepis User assistant, I have specified that the new user (rich) will use the existing directory (/home/rich) but an attempt to login will fail due to permissions problems so, as root on the command line do the following:
chown -hR rich /home/rich

This will recursively change the 'ownership' of all the contents of the existing directory to the new user id/user name. Obviously, change the user name and /home sub directory as appropriate for your system.

MEPIS on HP 2133 Mini-Note

Submitted by Anonymous on January 27, 2009 - 8:23am

http://h10003.www1.hp.com/digmedialib/prodimg/lowres/c01368683.jpg

I have just installed MEPIS 8.0 RC2 on an HP 2133 Mini-Note (netbook), and it works GREAT! I am so pleased and impressed! I have also tried openSuSE, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS and Debian (lenny) on the same netbook, and the only one which came close to working was openSuSE 11.1. The HP 2133 is a VIA CPU with Chrome9 display adapter and Broadcom Gigabit wired and 802.11 a/b/g wireless adapters, and they all were recognized, configured, and work just fine with MEPIS. I have written all of this and more in my blog on ZDNet UK, in hopes of spreading the word about my success with MEPIS.

Congratulations, and many thanks for what is obviously a lot of hard work in making such a fine distribution.

J.A. Watson

Deal with a GCC error

Submitted by admin on January 22, 2009 - 2:29pm

During the execution of an installer script, you may encounter the following error message:

The compiler used to compile the kernel (gcc 4.1) does not exactly match the current compiler (gcc 4.3). The Linux kernel module loader rejects kernel modules built with a version of gcc that does not exactly match that of the compiler used to build the running kernel.

If you know what you are doing and want to ignore the gcc version check, select "No" to continue installation. Otherwise, select "Yes" to abort installation, set the CC environment variable to the name of the compiler used to compile your kernel, and restart installation.

Abort now?

If such an error message occurs,

1. Immediately abort the installation, but stay in the terminal as root.
2. Execute the following command from the terminal:

export CC=/usr/bin/gcc-4.1

3. Retry the installation script.

Note that the error message may identify versions other than gcc-4.1 and gcc-4.3 that are in conflict. When changing the CC environment variable, use the version of gcc that was used to compile the kernel, as stated in the error message.

Quick logins in Firefox

Submitted by Anonymous on October 1, 2008 - 9:03am

If you like the wand feature in Opera for entering passwords for site logins, and want a similar Firefox functionality, get the Secure Login add-on. Like the wand, it automatically logs you in and takes you to the home page.

Enhance multimedia opportunities

Submitted by Anonymous on September 30, 2008 - 12:07pm

For legal reasons, some types of Linux (like MEPIS) don't include certain software that allows one to play as many DVDs, or certain multimedia files, as they would like. If you are not from a part of the world where these software packages raise legal issues this can be rather irksome. If that sounds like you, then to enable extra multimedia playing capabilities:

  • Open Synaptic Package Manager (Kmenu -> Settings)
  • At the top of Synaptic, go to Settings -> Repos
  • Place a check mark next to the repo as shown in the picture and click OK
  • Click the "Reload" button at the top right corner of the screen
  • View the new packages: on the right side on the bottom, click "Status" and then above the four buttons click "new in repository", or if time has elapsed since you enabled the multimedia repo, click "Not installed" to see all software (not just multimedia software) that isn't installed)
  • Now look through the list and find software packages (such as w32codecs)

Feel free to ask around on the MepisLovers forums to find out just what you need.

Move with Alt

Submitted by Anonymous on September 27, 2008 - 9:55am

alt_key.jpg

Sometimes you can't even see the titlebar of an application, so you are unable to move the application's screen. If you hold down the Alt key, then you can move the screen by clicking anywhere in it and dragging wherever you want.

randomness