After a really bad month for the economic point of view, i had to refocus all the goals of my company to jump out the hole where i fall thanks to the changes in the economy of my country (Venezuela), so i came out with the idea of give on-line courses about system security, hacking, pen-testing and that kind of stuff, including the usual Web Dev, Sys Admin courses.

I give a lot of conferences of Hacking and System Security around this year in various events, and taking advantage of that give some publicity to the courses, but of course including something: Our Beloved Geeko.

In the courses I teach using openSUSE, and have turned a lot of people that doesn’t even had a clue of what its linux, to be a totally Geeko Lovers, to the point that they speak about “The green side of the force”.

In all my conferences always appear the words: “openSUSE its the best option for newbies and advanced users”, “You wanna try Linux, well the best option i can give its openSUSE”, I am a proudly member/ambassador of the openSUSE Community”.

Subliminal, directly, any way i just point people to use and love the Geeko!

I hope to be more active around here in the next weeks when all the events and congress are done.

Cheers people! There are always some ways to Spread the word of the Geeko!

Possibly there was a integrity problem between the updater and the database RPM, or whatever, the true thing is that the error goes like:

Tamaño total a descargar: 174,1 MiB. Después de la operación se utilizarán 565,0 KiB adicionales.
¿Desea continuar? [s/n/?] (s): s
Descargando paquete graphviz-2.20.2-45.4.1.i586 (1/153), 868,0 KiB (2,2 MiB desempaquetado)
Descargando delta: ./rpm/i586/graphviz-2.20.2-45.3_45.4.1.i586.delta.rpm, 30,0 KiB
Obteniendo: graphviz-2.20.2-45.3_45.4.1.i586.delta.rpm [hecho (19,6 KiB/s)]
Aplicando delta: ./graphviz-2.20.2-45.3_45.4.1.i586.delta.rpm [hecho]
Instalando graphviz-2.20.2-45.4.1 [error]
La instalación de graphviz-2.20.2-45.4.1 ha fallado:
(con –nodeps –force) Error: Subprocess failed. Error: RPM fallido: error: db4 error(-30987) from dbcursor->c_get: DB_PAGE_NOTFOUND: Requested page not found
error: error(-30987) getting “” records from Requireversion index
error: db4 error(-30987) from dbcursor->c_get: DB_PAGE_NOTFOUND: Requested page not found
error: error(-30987) getting “” records from Requireversion index
error: db4 error(-30987) from dbcursor->c_get: DB_PAGE_NOTFOUND: Requested page not found

If you have some error like this one, the solution its extremely simple, just run in the command line interface:

sudo rpm --rebuilddb && sudo zypper clean -a && sudo zypper ref

This will rebuild the RPM database and then refresh the repos.

One: You can add Codecs and other stuff with a 1-click-package, avoiding to use Zypper, I just expose the zypper method because I think its a bit more short , but that its just matter of taste. So, if you are running openSUSE 11.3 with KDE use this ymp, and if you are using GNOME use this other. If you are on a older version of openSUSE, just go to this page and select your version.

Two: The broadcom-wl package its on Packman, so you have to add that repo (Via YaST -> Repositories), before you can install that package.

After this, now we can keep going.

Adding Games

So, the question: “¿Why a lot of games that are popular in the FOSS community aren’t by default in openSUSE?” For example, OpenArena, Battle for Wesnoth, aTanks, BlobWars, Crack Attack, LBreakout2, Torcs, SuperTux,… Well, because those games are on its own repo called “Games”.

To enable this repo just go to: “YaST -> Software Repositories”, then will show you the repos management window, you push “Add”, and then select “Specifying URL”, then in the name “Games”, and the URL “http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/games/openSUSE_11.3/“, “Next”, if he ask you something you say yes (import gpg signature and stuff), then you get back to the main window and then you hit “Accept”.

In the URL, change the number of the version if needed, and done… You have now a LOT of games available via YaST

Next to come: Adding 3D Acceleration.

After the event we have a “PizzaGeek”, with some of the participants to speak a lot of Geek Frikie stuff.

I hang a full photo set in Flickr,

Read well, read again, so you will not be lost. All the commands that I show here between double quotes (“) for the time of the execution will go without the quotes and with the text in bold just like that.

Wireless cards suppport

Although in the Linux kernel there are a lot of wireless cards supported by default, there are others “rare” that need a little more of work, so the first thing that you must do is execute this in a command line interface: “/sbin/lspci“, to get the list of your devices and then look for a line like this:

04:01.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR2413 802.11bg NIC (rev 01)

In my local desktop i have an Atheros Wireless Card that the kernel detected and put working by default. The same can happen with Intel an another ones around. If your luck is to have an Broadcom, like BCM43xx (the xx could be any number), you will need to plug your machine into a LAN, and then execute “su -c ‘install_bcm43xx_firmware’ “, this will ask you for your root password (normally its the same that your user password), and then this will going to install some files (the firmware) to get the working the B43 module. After the installation, just reboot your machine, now it should work. If not, you have some of those really weird Broadcom, so you must install the proprietary controller with: “sudo zypper in broadcom-wl“.

Audio and Video Codecs

Of course that you can play those divx, xvid and wmv video files, and your mp3 files with full support, all you must do its go to: “YaST -> Software Repositories”, then will show you the repos management window, you push “Add”, and then select “Community Repositories”, “Next”, select the “Packman Repositories”, “Next”, if he ask you something you say yes (import gpg signature and stuff), then you get back to the main window and then you hit “Accept”.

Then you execute in the command line: “zypper in libxine1 libxine1-codecs win32codecs“, and done. If he ask something about “providers change” you say yes.

Next to come: Adding games.

Of course, I don’t loose any time to Spread the openSUSE word, so I talk a lot about Linux, Why to use Linux in security matters, Why Windows is a Joke, and how openSUSE its a great choice for newbies and advanced users. There was 3 conferences for 600 people, in groups of 200. I gave DVD’s, CD’s and Stuff to everybody who ask, or want one… After my chat, everybody ask a lot about our beloved Geeko…

I hang some pictures in Flickr about the event. Next stop, make my Launch Party, that I couldn’t the last Weekend because this event. Cheers!

This time, i wanna take time to thank Maria “tatica” Leandro, the national coordinator of the event, for all the invaluable help and dedication that she put to get our FLISOL a really great live experience.

She is a famous Fedora Ambassador in the region, that got the sponsorship from Novell for all the sites, and even to get spread the openSUSE word in other post-flisol events. I would like help her in getting the material, but this happens in a time that i was bloated of work. So, I hope she gets her beatification from her invaluable help in the event.

(some of the photos are under a creative commons license)

A lot of happy faces after they see YaST and how easy somethings are.

Of course, the main character was our beloved “Gecko”, who captivated eyes, picking fights, tears and others because they all wanted a bit of it! xD

My premise was simple, free your machine and win a gecko or a DVD, or a t-shirt. Finally, I got one of my goals,  give a push to GoSVe and open people’s eyes to more options, as is openSUSE.

Some gallerys from the event:

Mérida:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/39953455@N04/sets/72157623811886803/

http://picasaweb.google.com/david.vzla/FLISOL2010

Caracas:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kamihacker/sets/72157623932324984/

More photos to come

GnuPG allows to quickly and easily create encrypted files without the use of public keys or complicated procedures, just run the following at a Linux terminal:

$ gpg -c test.txt _
Enter Password:
Repeat Password:
$ _

After you have run the command gpg -c, this will leave intact the original file and create another file called “test.gpg” in the same directory. This second file is the place where you want to prune without fear that information may be disclosed. You can then proceed to remove the original if needed.

To retrieve the contents of the file, perform the following process on the encrypted file:

$ gpg  test.gpg _
Enter Password:
Repeat Password:
$ _

GnuPG will automatically detect that it is an encrypted file, and request the key that first used.

Hope its useful

Through the sponsorship of Novell, the collaboration of ambassadors from other distributions, and GoSVe, the user group from Venezuela openSUSE, our distro will be present in all the sites of the great event of free software in the region, giving away DVD’s, LiveCD’s, stickers, t-shirts, and more.

In the city of Merida, we will be giving talks and demonstrations of our distribution and giving away all the material of that will be common in all the sites and stuffed animals for those that choose to “free” their computers and install openSUSE Linux.

Next to come: A lot of pictures