billpratt.net

So far, I love my Eee PC 1000 but the keyboard has one very annoying design flaw.  In order to maintain a proper inverted ‘T’ arrow key layout, the shift key was moved to the far right of the keyboard.  This is highly annoying since I hit the up arrow while intending to hit the right shift key.  I have read many other posts regarding this issue, but no solutions so I decided to fix it.

Please follow the below instructions at your own risk as they will probably set your monitor on fire while making that unreachable spot on your back itch.

The following  steps were performed on Eeebuntu Standard and have not been tested with any other distrobution.  If you get this to work on another distrobution, please comment to let me know and I will update the post. Ok, here is the meat of it:

1. Backup the /usr/share/X11 directory. (i.e. tar -cjvf ~/usr_share_x11.tar.bz2 /usr/share/X11)
2. Using your favorite editor, open the file /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us and after the closing curly brace of the first xkb_symbols block (line 68 for me) add the following lines and save and close the file.
   

   //Bill Pratt – tired of the eeepc 1000’s poor layout
   partial alphanumeric_keys modifier_keys
   xkb_symbols “eee1000″ {

   include “us(basic)”
   name[Group1]= “USA”;

   key <RTSH> {[ Up ]};
   key <UP> {[ Shift_R ]};
   };

3. Edit the file /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.lst and add the following line on the line following the first line that looks like “! model” then save and close the file.
   

   eee1000      Eee PC 1000 that swaps right shift and up arrow

4. Edit the file /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/xorg.lst and add the following line on the line following the first line that looks like “! variant” then save and close the file.
   

   eee1000         us: Eee PC 1000 that swaps right shift and up arrow

5. Edit the two files /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/xorg.xml and /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.xml. Look for the <layoutList> section below and add the bolded lines as shown. TDo this for both files.
   

   <layoutList>
   <layout>
   <configItem>
   <name>us</name>
   <shortDescription>USA</shortDescription>
   <description>USA</description>
   <languageList><iso639Id>eng</iso639Id></languageList>
   </configItem>
   <variantList>
   <variant>
   <configItem>
   <name>eee1000</name>
   <description>Eee PC 1000 that swaps right shift and up arrow</description>
   </configItem>
   </variant>

6. Now, logout of your current X session and log back in. After logging in, choose System -> Preferences -> Keyboard and click the “Layout” tab.
   

   

7. Click the green “+” and choose “United States” and “USA Eee PC…” then click “Add”. Notice the swapped right shift and up arrow keys in the layout below.
   

   

8. Next, highlight the old keyboard layout (typically “USA”) and click the red minus sign to remove it.
9. Finally click “Apply Site-Wide” and then click “Close”. You should now be using the improved layout.

Well, thats it. Hopefully this helps return your sanity. Please report success or failures to me and I will fix anything necessary.

Yay! I am getting a “fine ebony” (aka black) Eee PC 901 Linux edition for Christmas (ok, early Christmas) and it will be here on Thursday 12/11. I ordered it from B&H for $419 w/ no tax. This was the best price I could find and $100 under some places. I also bought 2G DDR2 667 ram to upgrade the 1G that comes standard and a 16GB SDHC card to bring the total solid state storage to 36G. If you are not familiar with the Eee PC line from Asus, you can learn more from Asus’ website and also at Wikipedia. The basic’s are simple. The Eee PC 901 is a “NetBook” sub-notebook computer that uses solid state storage instead of a traditional hard drive and weighs in at a mere 2.4 pounds and measures 8.9″ x 0.8-1.3″ x 6.7″. It has a small, 8.9″ display with a respectable 1024×768 resolution. Two version of the 901 are available, one with 12GB of storage and Windows XP, and another loaded with a custom version of Xandros Linux and 20GB of storage which I opted for (I will install Fedora 10). The machine has 802.ll b/g/n wireless, bluetooth, 3 usb ports, an ethernet port, and a memory card slot that supports MMC as well as SD / SDHC cards. The battery is a 6600 wah battery which supplies enough power to run the Eee PC up to 7.8 hours on one charge making this an ultra portable machine. I plan to use this in school for taking notes as well as a general purpose surfing / playing machine. I will definitely post some pictures and my experiences with this new toy so stay tuned.

I wanted something similar to Keychain on OSx for Linux and I remembered a shell script from years ago. I did a quick yum search and found a keychain package managed by Gentoo. You can find the full how-to here, but the basics are simple if you are familiar with ssh keys at all. First, install it using sudo install keychain. After it’s installed, add a line to your ~/.bash_profile that looks similar to:

/usr/bin/keychain ~/.ssh/id_dsa
. ~/.keychain/`uname -n`-sh

Then add the following line to .bashrc as some terminals (gnome-terminal for one) do not log in each time and will not see the sourced environment variables above:

. ~/.keychain/`uname -n`-sh

You can add as many paths to private keys as you want. Now fire up a terminal, and you will be prompted for you passphrases as if you had run ssh-add. From now on, any terminal you start will have your keys loaded. It works well and I have not had any problems yet. See the man page or the link above if you want further information as there are options that I have not mentioned here that you may be interested in.

For a long time I have used a program called chkrootkit for root kit scanning on Linux. This program recieved a much needed update in December of ‘07. To use it, download the package, extract it, and run make. Finally run chkrootkit > rootkit_scan.txt. After it finishes, view the results in rootkit_scan.txt. This is a really nice tool to add to your security arsenal.

I seem to struggle with installing Sun’s Java on Fedora every time. Here are the quick steps to get it working including the Firefox plug-in. I hope this helps someone.

1. Download Java from Sun as a self extracting rpm.
2. Remove java icedtea if it’s installed
   • sudo yum -y remove java-*-icedtea java-*-icedtea-devel java-*-icedtea-plugin
3. Install Java and answer yes to the license agreement (this is for version 6 update 3, you will need to adjust the filename to match the version you downloaded)
   • sudo sh ./jre-6u3-linux-i586-rpm.bin
4. You will need the following packages to get the Firefox plug-in to work
   • sudo yum -y install compat-libstdc++-33 compat-libstdc++-296
5. Now symlink the plug-in (this is for Firefox 2.0.0.12 so you will need to adjust the path for your version of Firefox
   • cd /usr/lib/firefox-2.0.0.12/plugins && sudo ln -s /usr/java/latest/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so
6. Setup alternatives to point to Sun’s Java
   • sudo /usr/sbin/alternatives –install /usr/bin/java java /usr/java/latest/bin/java 2 /usr/sbin/alternatives –config java

   There are 2 programs which provide 'java'.
   Selection    Command
   -----------------------------------------------
   *+ 1        /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.5.0-gcj/bin/java
   2           /usr/java/latest/bin/java
   
   Enter to keep the current selection[+], or type selection number: 2

7. Verify that the correct version of Java is being used
   • java -version

   java version "1.6.0_04"
   Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_04-b12)
   Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 10.0-b19, mixed mode)

That should do it. Please let me know if you have any questions or find any problems with this little how-to.