Quick Hacks VII

Summary:

• {= 7.x} Wallpaper On Login Screen
• {= 7.2} ~MandrakeUpdate And KDE 2.0.1
• {= 7.2} Various Sound Problems In KDE 2.x
• {= 7.2} Problems Updating With The Official ML 7.2 Update CD

{= 7.x} Wallpaper On Login Screen

(Contributed by Anders Lund, edited)

"Did you ever try to get a wallpaper on the login screen using KDE control center with no success? Here's why and how to do it1.1

"First, you tried using the KDE Control Center -> system -> login manager -> background module with no success - even though you figured out that being root for this task would be nice - and then read the documentation for the KDE control center that tells you how to use this module.
Here's why it doesn't work: The X login stuff is defined in the file '/etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup_0'. If you read the file, you will see that the command for running 'kdmdesktop' has been dropped "because of kdedesktop issues". And truly, if you re-enable 'kdmdesktop', it will display colors but no background. It doesn't work.

"However, you can use a good old X program to get a wallpaper: 'xli', often also used by the command 'xsetbg'. 'Xli' has a rich set of options and a nifty interactive help function, issue

xli -help

man xli

"Here's a command to set the file '/home/anders/images/cow.jpg' as the login screen wallpaper, stretched to fit the screen:

/usr/X11R6/bin/xli -onroot -fillscreen /home/anders/images/cow.jpg

"Add a similar command to 'Xsetup_0' after the 'kdmdesktop' line and you are set."

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{= 7.2} ~MandrakeUpdate And KDE 2.0.1

(Contributed by Civileme)

Problem: you may encounter RPM and menu problems after using ~MandrakeUpdate to update KDE to 2.0.1.

Fix: As 'root', run these commands on a terminal

updatedb<br> rpm &#150;&#150;rebuilddb<br> update-menus

Restart X.

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{= 7.2} Various Sound Problems In KDE 2.x

KDE 2.x introduced a new sound server architecture, 'artsd', which might provoke quite some problems with non-artsd applications like 'xmms'.
Please refer to the 'non-aRts applications' section of the aRts sound server FAQ for solving these problems. Ignore the 'general infos' section, since it is not applicable to ML and gives some rather dubious advice.

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{= 7.2} Problems Updating With The Official ML 7.2 Update CD

Using ~LiveUpdate with the Offcial ML 7.2 Update CD, to which some users of the boxed versions are entitled, might fail due to conflicting dependencies.
Put the Update CD into your CD drive and issue these commands (as 'root'):

unset DISPLAY<br> cd /mnt/cdrom/Mandrake/mdkinst/usr/bin/perl-install<br> ./live_install2

This will start the update process in text mode and should work.

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Related Resources:

Mandrake-Linux Bug-Tracker
Mandrake Linux Update and Security Advisories

Modified: Jan 04, 2001
Author: Tom Berger

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