ch0wned – Installing Open Office 3.4 as non-root in your home directory for Redhat RHEL 5

Written by max on 2012-12-03

Introduction

This is a brief guide to help you to install a newer version of Open Office on your Linux box w/out root access. For example, you could be installing into your home directory. Things have gotten a lot easier since the RHEL4 days.

Procedure
Basic Non-Root Install from RPMs

Download the RPM-based install for your distro and architecture. Example : Apache_OpenOffice_incubating_3.4.1_Linux_x86-64_install-rpm_en-US.tar.gz
Unzip the Tar ball into the place you want to install Open Office
mkdir ~/oo_3.4
cd ~/oo_3.4
tar xvfz ~/Downloads/Apache_OpenOffice_incubating_3.4.1_Linux_x86-64_install-rpm_en-US.tar.gz

Uncompress all the

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ch0wned – Getting a Logitech G500 Mouse and all its Buttons Working in Redhat EL5

Written by max on 2011-02-04

ch0wned. adj. This is the state when you are a Linux user and don’t have root access. Ok, so technically for this edition of ch0wned you need to have root :-P Hint – Sys admins usually like beer.

Intro

You have a Logitech G500 or other multi-button mouse and want to get all the buttons working. These mice use the evdev driver in xserver. Unfortunately, Redhat EL5 ships with a very buggy version 1.0.0.5-5 !!!

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Encrypted Open-Source Linux Backup to Amazon S3 using Amanda 3.2.x

Written by max on 2011-01-25

Overview

NOTE: This post was never quite finished… hopefully these partial instructions help someone in the future…

You want to backup a linux box using the open source version of zManda – Amanda. You’ld like to use Amazon S3 for storage on the cloud, and have it encrypted, as well as use reduced redundancy. You’ld like to not pay more S3 fees than you’ld have to. You’ld like to be able to do a “bare-metal” restore in case

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Mythdora 10 / MythTV + Antec Fusion 430 VFD LCD + lircd + LCDd

Written by max on 2009-11-22

Problem

This guide is how to setup the Antec Fusion 430 Case to work with Mythdora 10 and MythTV. I found a lot of guides on how to setup the drivers, but they were all out of date.

Pieces

There are three things you need to get running :

lirc_imon kernel driver
LCDd daemon
mythlcdserver daemon

All of these things came installed w/ Myth and didn’t require any additional patching or compiling.

To see the exact device we’re working with, run lsusb :

Bus 003 Device 002:

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ch0wned Part 2 – GTK+ and GLIB in your own home directory

Written by max on 2009-03-04

ch0wned. adj. This is the state when you are a linux user and don’t have root access.

For today’s installment we go over getting some basic libraries up to shape. If your Linux distro is old enough, you can’t use 3rd party binaries like Adobe Acrobat Reader (acroread), Firefox, and Flash because the GTI+ and GLIB libraries that they are compiled against are just too damned old. So we have to both install local copies, and

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ch0wned – A Linux distro in your home directory

Written by max on 2009-03-04

I’m coining a new term here : ch0wned (or ch0wn3d depending on how l33t you are).   

ch0wned. adj. This is the state when you are a linux user and don’t have root access. 

This is the case for a lot of people working Corporate jobs as engineers, including me.   I realized chr00ted is a more appropriate term, but then I couldn’t work 0wned into it.

So this post is the first in a serious of HOWTOs about maintaining a Linux distro out

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