Tagged: Linux

Openbox: Customizing to My Liking

In another post, I mentioned that I love Openbox for its minimal overhead, few dependencies, customizable menu and key-binding, and speed. I use it on my home system and decided to use the same configuration on my new notebook. Here is how I currently configured my system(s).

Disclaimer: The information below is the result of my researches in the Internet and of my experiences. It is solely used for my purpose and may not be suitable for others.

ObConf:

ObConf is the Openbox configuration tool which easily change themes of menus and windows. I happen to like 1977 Openbox theme available from Box-Look.org or here. $ mv 1977-Grey.obt /tmp $ obconf & ------------------------ Theme -> Install a new theme... -> 1977-Grey Appearance -> Button Order: IMC Appearance -> Active Window Title: Sans 4

Theme:

I use Morning Glory (GTK 2.x theme) available from Gnome-Look.org and customized it for my liking. My customized one is available here. Once downloaded it, un-tar it and move it to the .theme directory. Use lxappearance to select it as the theme. $ tar -xzvf MorningGlory.tar.gz $ mv MorningGlory ~/.themes $ lxappearance & ------------------------ Widget -> MorningGlory

Panel:

I use tint2 for my panel. My titn2rc is available here. $ tar -xzvf tint2.tar.gz $ mkdir ~/.config/tint2 $ mv tint2rc ~/.config/tint2/ $ tint2 & (or put it in autostart.sh)

Conky:

Conky is a fee software system monitor for X11 and is able to monitor system resources like CPU, memory, processes, disk usage, network interfaces, and much more. My conky is very simple and it displays system resources at the bottom of screen, looks much like a panel. My conkyrc file is available here. $ tar -xzvf conkyrc.tar.gz $ mv .conkyrc ~/ $ conky & (or put it in autostart.sh)

Autoscript:

When Openbox is launched with the openbox-session command, the environment script will be executed to set up the environment, and then the autostart script can launch any applications you want to run at startup, such as a panel, setting up a desktop wallpaper, etc... Once Openbox starts, the system-wide default script, located at /etc/xdg/openbox/autostart, will be run. Then the user script at ~/.config/openbox/autostart is run afterward. This is my autostart.

File managers:

I use Thunar; a fast, light-weight and easy-to-use file manager. It is the file manager for Xfce. I started using sunflower. It is available in AUR, so it needs to be built: $ mkdir ~/builds $ mv sunflower.tar.gz ~/builds $ tar -xzvf sunflower.tar.gz $ cd sunflower ------------------------ Check for PKGBUILD and any install files ------------------------ $ makepkg -s # pacman -U sunflower-<version number>-<package revision number>-<architecture>.pkg.tar.xz $ pacman -Qm

Icons:

Icons theme that I use is Faenza 1.2 available from Gnome-look.org. It comes with "zipped" format so I need an unzip program to extract it. $ mkdir icons; mv faenza_icons_by_tiheum-d2v6x24.zip icons/; cd icons $ unzip faenza_icons_by_tiheum-d2v6x24.zip $ ./INSTALL There is an INSTALL script for this so execute it and follow the instruction.

Wallpaper:

On my home system, I use nigrogen to draw wallpapers on my dual-head display, but I like feh for its lightweight and powerful image displaying capabilities. This is how to use it as a desktop wallpaper manager. $ feh --bg-scale /path/to/image.file As an image viewer: $ feh /path/to/image.file To browse images in a specific directory: $ feh -g 320x240 -d -S filename /path/to/directory
  • -g : Forces the images to appear no larger than 320x240
  • -d : Draws the file name
  • -S filename : Sorts teh images by file name
My current wallpaper for Arch Linux is available here.

Terminal:

I use rxvt-unicode (urxvt). It a terminal emurator forked from rxvt and supports unicode. It is highly customizable via ~/.Xdefaults and its complete reference is available from here. My .Xdefaults file is available here.

PS1:

My PS1 is very simple. Since there is only me on this system, I don't need to show the user name. Here is my .bashrc script $ vi ~/.bashrc ------------------------ ID=`id -u` if [[ "${ID}" -eq 0 ]]; then PS1='\]\e[01;35m\]root\]\e[00;31m\]@\h\[\e[00;37m\][\[\e[01;34m\]\w\[\e[00;37m\]]\n\[\e[47m\]\[\e[1;30m\]#\[\033[00m\] ' else PS1='\[\e[00;32m\]\A \[\e[00;91m\]\u\[\e[01;93m\]@\h\[\e[00;37m\][\[\e[01;34m\]\w\[\e[00;37m\]]\n\[\e[47m\]\[\e[1;30m\]$\[\e[00m\] ' fi set -o vi $ vim ~/.bash_profile ------------------------ if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then . ~/.bashrc fi

Key Binding:

One of Openbox’s great strengths is that every aspect of the window manager can be configured with keyboard. I'm still experimenting with this feature but here is my rc.xml. At this point, I move the active window with "Super" + l (to left), "Super" + h (to right), "Super" + k (to up), and "Super" + j (to down).

Menu:

My customized menu is here. This menu includes reboot and shutdown. For a regular user to be able run those commands, it needs to be added in the sudoers file:# visudo ------------------------ [user_name] ALL=NOPASSWD: /sbin/shutdown That's all!
-gibb

Slackware64 14: Post Installation Configuration

Yep. Long waited Slackware 14.0 was finally released on 09/28/2012! I immediately downloaded and installed on my system as a guest OS for VirtualBox. Since the installation and a bit of customization, I have not had enough time to play with it, but now, I tried some more configuration today.

Disclaimer:
The information below is the result of my researches in the Internet and of my experiences. It is solely used for my purpose and may not be suitable for others.

Switching to Generic Kernel:

During Slackware installation, it uses "huge" kernel, which has every hardware driver built in. It's not necessary to switch to "generic" kernel, but it is said that with "generic" kernel, it uses less memory and runs faster since "generic" kernel has virtually no drivers built in and all drivers are loaded into RAM on demand.

Create an initial RAM # /usr/share/mkinitrd/mkinitrd_command_generator.sh

This is an informational-only command which shows a next command (mkinitrd) to run to generate the initrd.gz image. # # mkinitrd_command_generator.sh revision 1.45 # # This script will now make a recommendation about the command to use # in case you require an initrd image to boot a kernel that does not # have support for your storage or root filesystem built in # (such as the Slackware 'generic' kernels'). # A suitable 'mkinitrd' command will be: mkinitrd -c -k 3.2.29 -f ext4 -r /dev/sdb2 -m ohci-hcd:mbcache:jbd2:ext4 -u -o /boot/initrd.gz

Add a new section in /etc/lilo.conf to load a new image. # vim /etc/lilo.conf ------------------------ image = /boot/vmlinuz-generic-3.2.29 initrd = /boot/initrd.gz # add this line so that lilo sees initrd.gz root = /dev/sda1 label = Slackware read-only

Also, put "lba32" in the global options in /etc/lilo.conf to avoid getting a warning message "lba32 addressing assumed" # vim /etc/lilo.conf ------------------------ # Override dangerous defaults that rewrite the partition table: change-rules reset lba32 # Normal VGA console

Save the file and run below command then reboot. # lilo -v

That's all!
-gibb

Installing Arch Linux: LVM on top of an encrypted partition

IMPORTANT!!!
I now have updated version of Arch Linux with LVM on LUKS, Installing Arch Linux: LVM on top of an encrypted partition [[UPDATED]] with updated contents. Please visit that page!

I recently got a new notebook from my friend. I'm a slackware user but decided to give it a try on Arch Linux for this notebook. Ah... Arch Linux. I like its simplicity and user-centric philosophy. So I was reading up about Arch Linux and came across about encryption. Hmm... I could give it a try and make my notebook secure.

After reading, it looks like setting up LVM on top of the encrypted partition is the best method. So, I'll do that.

Disclaimer:
Information below is gathered mostly from the Arch Linux Wiki page and changed here and there for my liking. This information below is solely used for my purpose and may not be suitable for others.

Erasure of the Hard Disk:

Information (data) on a Hard Drive is written in chunk here and there. Re-partitioning or reformatting a disk does not really removes (erase) the data. It merely remove the system structure that used to identify where the original data was located. This leaves the actual data on a disk.

To securely erase a disk, you could either:

  • Fill with zeros
  • Fill with random bits
Both methods overwrite data on a disk but the first one fill with zero's leaving easily (to some extent) identify where the encrypted data ends. So, I follow the second method. # dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/<drive> bs=1M Just to be warned, this takes a long, long time.

Partitioning a Disk:

Even though Arch Linux version that I'm using (2012.08.04) comes with GRUB2 and this supports having the /boot partition in LVM, the /boot directory has to reside on its own. If the /boot directory is encrytpted (with or without LVM), the bootloader cannot read it; thus, boot failure will occur. # fdisk /dev/sda

Partition Layout:
/dev/sda1 -> /boot (bootable)
/dev/sda2 -> LVM (8e)

Configuring LUKS:

cryptsetup is used to interface with LUKS for formatting, mounting and unmounting encrypted partition.

First make sure the device mapper kernel module is installed: # modprobe dm-mod

Then format it as an encrypted LUKS partition: # cryptsetup -c aes-xts-plain -s 512 -yvh sha256 luksFormat /dev/sda2

  • -c: defines the cipher type
  • -s: defines the key size
  • -yvh sha256: prompts for the password twice and stores it in a 256-bit hash

It looks like AES cipher in XTS mode (XTS-AES) is most popular these days.

Unlocking/Mapping LUKS partition with the Device Mapper:

To access the encrypted volume, It needs to be unlocked. # cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda2 lvm

LVM:

Create a physical volume (encrypted volume) and a group volume. # lvm pvcreate /dev/mapper/lvm # lvm vgcreate lvmvg /dev/mapper/lvm

Create logical volumes on this new volume group. # lvm lvcreate -L 10G -n root lvmvg # lvm lvcreate -L 500M -n swap lvmvg # lvm lvcreate -l 100%FREE -n home lvmvg

Installation of Arch Linux:

Follow my blog entry, Installing Arch Linux on LVM, to install Arch Linux.

Configuration:

There are several configuration files that need to be modified.

/etc/rc.conf

Change USELVM="no" to USELVM="yes": # vi /etc/rc.conf -------------------- USELVM="yes"

/etc/mkinitcpio.conf

Configure /etc/mkinitcpio.conf for encryption and LVM by adding encrypt lvm2 (in this order) in the HOOKS section before filesystems so that the kernel will find LVM volumes at boot time. # vi /etc/mkinitcpio.conf -------------------- HOOKS="...encrypt lvm2 filesystems..."

/boot/grub/grub.cfg

Add cryptdevice=/dev/sda2:lvmvg between root=... and ro in the line starts with linux. This needs to be done for "Arch Linux" and "Arch Linux Fallback". # vi /boot/grub/grub.cfg -------------------- linux /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/mapper/lvmvg-root cryptdevice=/dev/sda2:lvmvg ro quiet

Reboot:

Now reboot the system.

That's all!
-gibb

Openbox (w/ Arch Linux)

On my home system, I use Openbox as a stand-alone WM and I love it! It's lightweight and highly configurable. So, I decide to go with Openbox on my new notebook.

Disclaimer:
Information below is gathered mostly from the Arch Linux Wiki page and changed here and there for my liking. This information below is solely used for my purpose and may not be suitable for others.

Installation:

Install openbox package. # pacman -S openbox

Openbox configuration files:

There are four openbox configuration files and they need to be copied to ~/.config/openbox.

Execute below as a regular user, NOT as root. $ mkdir -p ~/.config/openbox $ cp /etc/xdg/openbox/{rc.xml,menu.xml,autostart,environment} ~/.config/openbox

  • rc.xml - Main configuration file. It defines keyboard shortcuts, themes, virtual desktops, etc...
  • menu.xml - It defines the content of the right-click menu.
  • autostart - This file is read by openbox-session at startup. It contains the programs that are run at startup. It is typically used to set environment variables, launch panels/docks, set background image or execute other startup scripts.
  • environment - This file is sourced by openbox-session at startup. It contains environment variables to be set in Openbox's context. Any variables you set here will be visible to Openbox itself and anything you start from its menus.

Executing Openbox as a stand-alone WM

I like its simplicity. So, I run it as a stand-alone WM.

Append the following to ~/.xinitrc $ cat >> ~/.xinitrc exec openbox-session ^D

This is how to start Openbox from the command shell. $ xinit /usr/bin/openbox-session

That's all!
-gibb