20030424 Lockergnome Penguin Shell

Custom Mozilla Searches

Today's GnomeTWEAK is a little trick with Mozilla upon which I've become very, very dependent. It's a way to perform custom searches from the address bar on nearly any search engine.

The tweak is made possible by Mozilla's bookmark keyword function. This feature allows you to assign shortcuts to your bookmarks. If, for example, you visit Slashdot regularly, you can assign your Slashdot bookmark the shortcut slash or sd. You can then access the Slashdot site by typing Slash or sd in the address bar. It's considerably quicker than pulling down the bookmarks menu and searching through until the Slashdot bookmark is found.

To utilize this feature for an existing bookmark, select Manage Bookmarks from the Bookmark menu. Right-click on the bookmark you'd like to shortcut and select Properties. Assign your keyword in the keyword text box, then close the window. Test your new shortcut by typing it into the address bar and pressing the Enter key.

To make this shortcut work with a search engine is nearly as easy. First, visit Google and perform a search. I'm using Penguin Shell in this example. Bookmark the results page. Select Bookmarks/Manage Bookmarks as before. Find the page you just bookmarked, right click and select properties. In the location text box, you'll see this line:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=Penguin+Shell&btnG=Google+Search

The key element of the search is the string that immediately follows the "q": &q=Penguin+Shell. Strip out Penguin+Shell and replace it with %s. This instructs Mozilla to pass your search string to Google. Now, add your shortcut (gg, for example) to the keywords field, and save the customization by selecting OK.

Let's test the tweak. Enter the following in the address bar:

your-google-keyword Pirillo

You'll be automagically transported to Google, displaying the results of your search.

I use five of these custom search keywords nearly daily. gg for General Google, gl for Google Linux, rss for Feedster, fm for Freshmeat, and sd for Slashdot. It will, in fact, work for most sites that utilize a search capability, though not all will follow the exact regimen of Google. Slashdot, for instance, returns a string like this:

http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=pirillo

In this case, you'll replace pirillo with the %s characters. The best way to understand how a particular site works is to simply look for your own search string in the return results in the address bar, then replace your string with %s.

Saving effort, one keystroke at a time ...

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GnomeCORE

Setting the PATH

The PATH in Linux is largely unnoticed - until you try to launch a program using only a command and find that it doesn't work. This can be fairly common in Linux distros. Programs in the /usr/sbin directory, for example, are generally not in the PATH. Today's GnomeCORE will help you lessen the keystrokes necessary to launch your Linux programs.

If you've come to the Linux world from Windows, you're already familiar with the PATH concept. The concept is the same in either OS. Setting a directory in PATH allows you execute the program without the full path name. Your system looks first to PATH, reading through all the listed path names, looking for one that contains the command you've issued. If the program isn't in a listed directory, you'll get an error message stating that the command wasn't found. These are programs that require the full path name.

There are two ways to add a directory to your PATH. The first is a "session only" addition. From within a console window, enter the following command:

export PATH=/path/to/file

This temporarily adds the new path to the current session. In other words, closing the console window will throw out the exported PATH.

There is a more permanent solution, created by modifying a single file on your system. .bash_profile contains your user PATH. Don't forget the (.) in the file name - it's there specifically to hide the file from normal ls directory listings. From your /home/user directory, open the .bash_profile file in your favorite text editor.

cd /home/tony
vi .bash_profile

Within this file, you'll find a line similar to this one:

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin

This is where you'll add the new directory. Simply append this PATH addition to the line, separated by a colon:

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin:/usr/sbin

In the .bash_profile file, every directory in the PATH is listed in this line, separated by a colon. Once you've made the addition, save the file, close the editor and close your current session. The next time you open a console window, programs in the /usr/sbin directory will be executed without benefit of the full path name.

There are hundreds of ways in Linux to save a few keystrokes - important if you're a die-hard keyboard user. While adding directories to your PATH should be used with due caution, it can save an abundance of keystrokes.

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GnomeFILE

MSN Messenger for Linux

http://amsn.sourceforge.net/

The MSN Messenger for Linux is a spot-on knockoff of the MS version. It features nearly all of the functionality of the original within the same look and feel. Features include a unified preferences window, multi-language, file transfers, group support, and event sounds. The MSN Messenger for Linux should satisfy even the most hardcore Win MSN user.

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GnomeVOICE

XFree86
Scribbled by Jim Morgan

"Your article on upgrading XFree86 to 4.3.0 just reminded me of one of my pet hates about Linux. When you install a new operating system, the graphical setup routines of all the major distributions can successfully detect and configure the XFree86 installation. However, when you try to do this using the XFree86 configure command, or the XF86Configurator, or xf86cfg for that matter, they invariably fail to detect hardware, and you end up with a broken installation. In the worst case (as happened to me recently), you end up having to reinstall. I wasted the best part of a day trying different parameters in the XF86 configuration utilities, and then just three hours doing a complete re-install.

"There must be an easier way. If the installer can detect the hardware, why can't XFree86? Is there a way of running the same tool that the installer uses to probe the hardware, to get a working installation, _after_ the installation has taken place?

"I thought this might make an interesting topic, and, if the answer to the above questions is affirmative, a vital piece of time- and sanity-saving knowledge."

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GnomeCLICK

Preview of the Newisys 2100 Enterprise-Class Server

http://www.linux-mag.com/online/pr_opteron_01.html

Today's GnomeCLICK is a web-exclusive review of the Newisys 2100 Enterprise-Class Server, available only on Linux Magazine. A sample:

Why are we so jazzed about this box? Newisys and AMD have managed to fit twin Opteron processors, up to 16 GB of RAM (yes, sixteen gigabytes), an Ultra320 SCSI disk system with 2 drive bays, a CD-ROM drive, a floppy drive, twin Gigabit Ethernet ports, and an integrated systems management card (think web-based Compaq Insight Manager on steroids, running its own dedicated PowerPC embedded Linux machine) all in a 1U rackmount machine. And the thing practically makes no noise and gives off no heat whatsoever. (Try that with an Itanium 2 or a Xeon configuration, folks. You'll be lucky to fit that in 2U or 4U, and you'll probably be able to cook your breakfast on the casing.)

It's a thorough review of a bleeding-edge server, slated for release today.

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