Here are RPMs for a bug-fixed fvwm2-2.2.4 installation (compared with the Red Hat 6.2 distribution). The bugs fixed pertain to FvwmTaskBar.

• The Start button initiated its action (e.g. Start Menu) with a bogus window context. This would cause Fvwm2 to crash if a window operation was used in this context.
• The *FvwmTaskBarMailBox option did not work.
• The Start Button stayed pressed in after use.

The new RPMs have been made using a patch file, and a new spec file, available from the table below. You can use the patch, with the supplied new spec file, to build these RPMs yourself (simply copy the spec file to /usr/src/redhat/SPECS, and the patch file to /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES; and then run rpm -ba /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/fvwm2.spec). Or, you can download the RPMs directly from here. (BTW, the fvwm2-icons-2.2.4-4jtl.i386.rpm should not be any different from the fvwm2-icons-2.2.4-4.i386.rpm already installed in Red Hat 6.2; so you probably can skip that one without worrying).

fvwm-2.2.4-jtl.patch

fvwm2.spec

fvwm2-2.2.4-4jtl.i386.rpm

fvwm2-icons-2.2.4-4jtl.i386.rpm

fvwm2-2.2.4-4jtl.src.rpm

This is a simple wrapper script mainly for cleaning up after netscape leaves lock and core files. But it can be used to wrap any program. When this script receives a signal 1, 2, 3 or 15; it will send that signal and then signals 1, 2, 3, 15 and 9 (except for the signal sent first) at 3 second intervals to the wrapped program, until it dies. Then it will clean up a lock file, if required, and a core file, if required.

Here are RPMs for getting the Manchester University, Department of Computer Science, standard dotfiles set up on your own Linux machine. This version is suitable for a file store which is used for Linux only (although it may still contain some of the SunOs and Solaris files).

Latest version 090909-2 (a date).

Have you ever wondered if you could get linux to log you in immediately after booting up, so you could switch on your machine, go to the kettle, and come back ready to work?

Interesting idea, but isn't it insecure? Well that depends. If your machine is your own, and there is no insecure access to the console, then what is the problem? If you have a lap top, then its a very good idea to enable the bios bootup password. So, assuming (within reason) that only you can get a boot prompt, then that should be enough security for a console login.

Okay, so how can you do it? Here's the simple way, to always login a specified user on virtual console 1. This works fine with text logins which is always my preferred setup thanks to the flexibility. I don't know how to do it if you're using X logins.

In the file /etc/inittab find the line

1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty1

1:2345:respawn:/usr/bin/open -c 1 -w -- /bin/login -f jtl

Now, on reboot it will log that user in automatically without the need for a password. If you use the standard M.U.C.S. dotfiles, you'll probably also want to disable window manager prompting on login, for that user. Create or edit the file $HOME/.my_bash_profile_prelude.linux to contain the line:

LinuxOfferWindowManagerChoice=False

We can go one better than this. What if sometimes you want to boot up without the automatic login, sometimes with automatic login as one user, sometimes as another etc.? This can be achieved by having several lilo entries in your /etc/lilo.conf file, each setting a different value to an environment variable; and getting /etc/inittab to run a script which reads that value. For example your modified entry in /etc/inittab could be:

1:2345:respawn:/root/bin/init-vc-1

#!/bin/sh
case "$AutoLogin" in
"") exec /sbin/mingetty tty1 ;;
*)  exec /usr/bin/open -c 1 -w -- /bin/login -f "$AutoLogin" ;;
esac

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.2-2
        label=linux
        read-only
        root=/dev/hda5

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.2-2
        label=linux-jtl
        read-only
        root=/dev/hda5
        append="AutoLogin=jtl"

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.2-2
        label=linux-john
        read-only
        root=/dev/hda5
        append="AutoLogin=john"

Probably the primary difference in philosophy between UNIX (Linux) and Windows is that the UNIX user wishes to have straightforward ways of doing simple and common things, without the need for a bloated user interface with a million buttons to press each time. Well, that's my view (and I do hate GNOME and KDE!!!).

Here is a script I use for fuss-free CD writing. It takes a number of directories as arguments, creates a CD image of them, mounts that CD image using a loop back device, lets you browse inside it with a shell to check its what you want, then when you exit that shell, it writes it to CD, and verifies the write! What more could you want?! :-)

Various simple options let you control whether blanking is done, how many copies to write, what image file to use, and whether or not the image file already exists, and even a verify only option.

You will need to tailor it to suit the position and speed of your CD Writer, and the name and path of your default image file. For the script to be usable by non root users, you will also need to add an entry to your /etc/fstab file -- see inside the script for a clue.