Fatdog64-901 Final [10 Oct 2023]

[fatdoguser]

m1k3, Keef,
thank you for the suggestions but I was just looking for the decorations only, not the entire window, font size etc.
Maybe I am too peculiar.
Have a good year

Fatdog control panel, Display, Display Properties and in the pull-down menu set select and try a lower screen resolution. A lower resolution will yield larger desktop icon sizes.

Under the Appearance section there's a Set Global Font size option, where you might increase/decrease the dpi.

/etc/X11/app-defaults/URxvt and in that file you can change the terminal font size to larger/smaller

Again in Display/Appearance the ChTheme GTK theme chooser has a Font and Font size selection box at the bottom

In Qt5 Setting there's a font tab where values can be changed

And yet another under the Appearance/OpenBox Configuration Manager

In Geany, Edit/Preferences/Interface you can set the font size for the editor section.

In galculator Edit/Preferences you can adjust the Display and Button tab values

In the LX panel right clicking and you can set menu font size

When launching Chrome you can add a --device-scale-factor=1.2 switch to scale up the menu fonts, firefox .... and seamonkey ... do it other ways

rox-filer has a right mouse menu for setting options that include font sizes and desktop icon text size

If you use jwm then ~/.jwmrc can be edit to adjust the font sizes separately for windows title, menu fonts, clock font ...etc.

a.k.a. there are many places to change the look-n-feel in reflection of a combination of gtk2, gtk3, qt ...etc. different choices that application providers individually prefer to use.

Mostly Fatdog default is OK, but often 'too small' - that setting a higher dpi alone can 'fix'. The default as-is is usually 96, I increase mine to 144. If icons are too small then the next port of call is to select a lower screen resolution.

[retiredt00]

Dear jamesbond (author of the script in question)
I would like to change the default position of the drive icons instead of the default bottom-left-horizontal to top-right-vertical.
I could not find any GUI to modify the ROX desktop layout and drive position. If there is one please point to it.
So instead I am trying to find my way through the fatdog-drive-icon-* (for me) maze, and I stumbled upon the *get_free_coord.awk script.
It usually helps me to understand what a script is doing if I can see what exactly each command/line is doing, as evoked by the -x option in the shell shebang.
However, I (google) could not find anything equivalent for the awk shebang and the debug option in the script is not doing what I would hope for.
So I was wondering if there is a "set -x" equivalent for awk scripts.
If this is not available I would be grateful if you could point to the scripts and options that could set top-right-vertical the positioning of the hard drives
Thank you

Unrelated to the above or the subject:
I can see people thanking and being thanked under their avatar.
How do I do that (thanking)?

[step]

@retiredt00 the GUI to change drive icon layout is in system menu Setup > Fatdog64 Control Panel > System > Fatdog64 Event Manager.

[step]

Unrelated to the above or the subject:
I can see people thanking and being thanked under their avatar.
How do I do that (thanking)?

Click the thumbs-up icon in the upper right icon bar of each post.

[retiredt00]

@retiredt00 the GUI to change drive icon layout is in system menu Setup > Fatdog64 Control Panel > System > Fatdog64 Event Manager.

Thank you.
No more scripting for me
Now FatDog looks like a fruit!

[step]

@retiredt00 nice desktop!
Take a look at this further customization, if you're into mac themes
obconf - button order

obconf-20240110.png (57.1 KiB) Viewed 1163 times

[fatdoguser]

Hi @retiredt00

Openbox uses /root/.config/openbox/rc.xml as its configuration file, within that there is a keybinding section within which you might set up key combinations to invoke xclip copy or paste actions. You may have to install xclip from gslapt/repo, can't recall if its built into Fatdog by default or not.

[fatdoguser]

@retiredt00 One thing to keep in mind is that Fatdog has tended to be upgraded once yearly, and that's more of a total replacement than a actual upgrade from a existing system (a total fresh reinstall/build). So keep a good record of any modifications you do make or things you installed, as if anything like me you'll have forgotten how/what you did to tweak things as you prefer and have failed to have kept notes. Nowadays I mostly just leave the main Fatdog system as-is, other than resizing fonts/display, and run a entirely separate jwm based choice as the 'program launcher' (desktop). jwm has its own config files (.jwmrc/.jwmrc-tray ..etc.) within which the likes of key bindings can be set.

[retiredt00]

I mentioned in a previous post that installing Skypeforlinux from the Debian package worked. And indeed it does.
However, after you quit skype, second time around it crashes.
The crashing remains after reboot and I can only start Skype again if I delete /home/spot/.config/skypeforlinux
Given that Skype runs under “run-as-spot” the terminal gives no information on the cause of crash.
Is there any way to monitor the terminal output of the “daughter” application when you run it via “run-as-spot”?
Thank you for any suggestions

[retiredt00]

Dear FatDog team
Here is a little problem I came across.
On low battery a warning comes up saying it will not go away unless you plug a power source, which is OK.
However if there is not one around and you choose to shutdown the warning totally covers the shutdown dialogue. Would be nice if either of the two could be adjusted.
Also where can I see and modify the threshold for the warning message?
Thank you

[fatdoguser]

Dear FatDog team
Here is a little problem I came across.
On low battery a warning comes up saying it will not go away unless you plug a power source, which is OK.
However if there is not one around and you choose to shutdown the warning totally covers the shutdown dialogue. Would be nice if either of the two could be adjusted.
Also where can I see and modify the threshold for the warning message?
Thank you

As I recall, its a yellow box, that if you mouse click within that .. it disappears. IIRC it also mentions that within the yellow box.

[retiredt00]

As I recall, its a yellow box, that if you mouse click within that .. it disappears. IIRC it also mentions that within the yellow box.

Indeed when this happened again it did disappear on click.
Sorry to bring this up after only one instance.

[retiredt00]

Dear FatDog team
Is there any power management utility in FatDog to adjust if and when the computer will sleep or suspend depending if it is on battery or plugged?
Thank you

[step]

I'm not aware of such a utility in Fatdog64.

[fatdoguser]

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cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT1/status

and typically if running on battery it will indicate Discharging. Otherwise it will indicate something else (Charging, Full, whatever).

/etc/acpi/events/lid contains ...

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event=button/lid LID close
action=/etc/acpi/actions/suspend.sh

so /etc/acpi/actions/suspend.sh is where the action occurs when the kernel sees that the lid has been closed, and within that it (near the bottom) runs

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echo mem >/sys/power/state

so somewhat trivial to change that to a if then else condition according to the current battery state

If you cat /sys/power/state it indicates the available options, mine shows freeze, mem, disk

disk requires a swap partition, echo disk >/sys/power/state may run without a swap being available ... put the laptop asleep, but you wont be able to recover from that (you'll have to press/hold the laptops power button for several seconds to initiate a cold/hard boot).

A difficulty is that different boxes have different options/settings, acpi is a bit all over the place.

Probably easier to know your own system and create a script in /usr/local/bin or somewhere in your PATH to run before you close the lid,
zzz containing

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echo mem >/sys/power/state

ZZZ containing

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echo disk >/sys/power/state

That's better in my particular case as sometimes such as when playing a music youtube I like it to remain active/playing even when I close the laptop lid to go-upstairs. Or if going to bed and don't want to shut down the laptop, open a terminal and run ZZZ (or have a desktop icon linked to do that) to put the laptop into deep sleep/very low power mode.

If you've no swap partition, your stuck with just freeze. I've seen some however who as part of the ZZZ script create a /swapfile, mkswap /swapfile and swapon /swapfile ... that before doing a echo disk >/sys/power/state, and then swapoff and remove that after resuming. But in practice its not quite as simple as that, the kernel has to 'know' about the swap availability or some quirk like that. I've seen some suggesting the swap file should be the same size as you have available ram, others suggesting more, yet others suggesting half the amount of ram you have is enough. A swap file in that case doesn't need to be contiguous so can be created more quickly with truncate to create a sparse file rather than dd'ing 8GB or whatever.

[dr__Dan]

@retiredt00,

I think the built-in Vattery has some ability to act on battery state to run programs to handle sleep etc., and can be set up somewhat. I don't use it, but substitute the old Fatdog Battery Applet script to handle battery warnings. The script can be edited to give different results, but could use more development, and I haven't solved some technical hurdles I ran into a couple of years ago (lack of motivation). It doesn't control different suspend or shutdown options based on power supply, but it could easily enough. You could probably do better than I.

Maybe that helps.

Dan

[retiredt00]

Dear fatdoguser and dr__Dan
thank you for the suggestions and scripts.
However I'm looking for a power management application with GUI as the bigger distributions provide.
Something that you can set different conditions for battery or power adapter, monitor, disk, memory etc.
Scripting that from scratch is not easy for me and when I tried to compile something from other desktop environments failed with a bunch of missing tools and dependencies.
Have a nice WE

[dr__Dan]

Hello @retiredt00,

Have you looked at tlp and tlpui? I haven't yet, but I wonder if it might serve your need. It seems to be new to the 900 repository.

I'll have to investigate it soon.

(Edit) I got some unexpected free time, and looked at tlpui. It's nice, but maybe not what you are after.

Dan

[jamesbond]

To add to @step and others, the only power management that Fatdog does are:
a) alert when the battery is low, and
b) shutdown when the battery is too low, and
c) suspend if the lid is closed.

We don't do anything else; things like "automatically suspend after idling for XX minutes" etc, if you need this you will need to script it yourself.

I know that scripting is probably isn't your cup of tea, however, I'll write down the information anyway for you and others who might need it.

/etc/acpi/actions/ac_adapter.sh is a script that will be run when AC power is plugged or unplugged. It's a very simple script, but it is a good start to start looking.

Then as @fatdoguser said, to actually the suspend you just need to echo mem > /sys/power/state, but this almost always is a guarantee for failure. You need to do certain things before you can suspend carefully, for an example, look at /etc/acpi/actions/suspend.sh script. You can actually make the computer suspend by running this script, but beware, not all PCs will suspend carefully (there might be other things that needs to be "turned off" before the system can suspend successfully).

To know whether the user is idle or not, run xprintidle in terminal: it will print the time the user has been idle, in milliseconds. (You can't just run xprintidle directly, because the very fact you press "Enter" to run it means that you're active. To see it in action, run the following, and in between, press some keys (e.g Shift keys) and see the number is reset each time you do that): while true; do sleep 1; xprintidle; done. (Press Ctrl-C to stop it).

Anyway, between the three of these, one should be able to automate the power management that one wants.

[fatdoguser]

Sensing @retiredt00 that you might be more suited to a terminal/server style setup. Use Fatdog as the 'terminal' that connects to server(s), selecting whichever ones might best match your task in hand. Basically what I do, but where I also maintain some of my own servers, one on my phone, another on a desktop, another third party. My laptop boots in a second, net connects and ssh/vnc in a few seconds more, and you drop back into a full gui desktop as you left it or however it had moved on since you last disconnected. If a third party server they take care of all of the scripting/admin/upgrading etc.

Former 'programs' are increasingly becoming more like complete OS's, where you pick the OS/program that you like the most. You might be running a Windows based OS/program in a window for one program, a Linux based OS/program in another window ...etc. The world of vm's, vnc servers etc. Often I'll have my phone available as ctrl-alt-F2 on my laptop, a full Linux (Fatdog) desktop on ctrl-alt-F3, another third party server on ctrl-alt-F4 ...etc. and where with modest configuration such as sshfs moving files from one to another can be a simple rox drag/drop action.

I like Fatdog as both a build system (to build the 'terminal' session) and as a server. It's incredibly flexible and solid. A major point to bear in mind is that once/year or so you'll be starting afresh - so if you make too many changes you may struggle to get the next release to look/feel the same. I suspect many longer term users tend to make relatively few changes, mostly just resizing things (windows/menus).

[retiredt00]

Dear Fatdog Team
Living with FatDog 901 as the main system in the old macbook pro for almost a month I am pretty happy with it!
My major problem is the use of the control vs the command (Supper_L/Super_R) keys.
I have tried to switch them over
a) using sven (the assigned copy and paste scripts to Super+c and Super+v did not work as intended)
b) using /etx/X11/app-defaults/Xmodmap and ~/.Xmodmap and the respective codes either from xev or showkey (nothing changed after X restart) and
c) trying to compile xkeysnail (https://github.com/mooz/xkeysnail) and kinto (https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto) that failed due to an unmet now depreciated python3 dependency (PIL vs pillow).
If anyone has any suggestions on how to swap Control and Super keys system-wide, I would very much appreciate it

[step]

@retiredt00, you should be able to swap those keys by configuring the Apple keyboard module. Dowload the attached apple_hid.conf.gz file, rename it without ".gz" (fake extension to allow forum attachment) and place the file in /etc/modprobe.d (create the directory if necessary). Edit the file and customize settings - it's already configured to swap Super and Control keys.

[retiredt00]

@retiredt00, you should be able to swap those keys by configuring the Apple keyboard module. Dowload the attached apple_hid.conf.gz file, rename it without ".gz" (fake extension to allow forum attachment) and place the file in /etc/modprobe.d (create the directory if necessary). Edit the file and customize settings - it's already configured to swap Super and Control keys.

Dear step
thank you for the hid_apple.conf. Unfortunatelly it does not work.
As a matter of fact it brakes all the customization of FatDog for macbooks.
Worse of all, the option to swap control with command is not theer but it rather swaps control with function key and command with alt key making the keyboard even more unfamiliar.
I believe that this module rather serve to transform the apple keyboard to a windows one.
I looked for other configuration options but failed to find anything else in the internet.
If there is something more please point to it.
Thank you for taking the time.

[step]

thank you for the hid_apple.conf. Unfortunatelly it does not work.

I'm sorry it doesn't work for you. I was convinced it included some setting to cover your case.

As a matter of fact it brakes all the customization of FatDog for macbooks.

I don't understand what you mean. Which customization do you refer to? The one in /etc/rc.d/rc.platform? Your own customization for your macbook? I'm asking because I tested this driver configuration file with a macbook mid 2012 and it works without breaking platform customization.

Worse of all, the option to swap control with command is not theer but it rather swaps control with function key and command with alt key making the keyboard even more unfamiliar.
I believe that this module rather serve to transform the apple keyboard to a windows one.

You're right. It swaps Super (Command) with Alt, not with Control as you requested.

I looked for other configuration options but failed to find anything else in the internet.
If there is something more please point to it.

Maybe the following thread - untested by me - though you said you already tried Xmodmap and it didn't work. https://askubuntu.com/questions/131900/ ... acbook-pro

[retiredt00]

As a matter of fact it brakes all the customization of FatDog for macbooks.

I don't understand what you mean. Which customization do you refer to? The one in /etc/rc.d/rc.platform? Your own customization for your macbook? I'm asking because I tested this driver configuration file with a macbook mid 2012 and it works without breaking platform customization.

Dear step,
I was not precise. It did not brake the customization. It changed the way the worked in the sense they need a modifier key to work (like a windows machine) instead of directly (like a mac and the original FatDog modifications)

Maybe the following thread - untested by me - though you said you already tried Xmodmap and it didn't work. https://askubuntu.com/questions/131900/ ... acbook-pro

Yes that is the page I consulted when I tried the xmodmap approach mentioned earlier without a lot of success.

[retiredt00]

Hello fatdog team
I noticed that the screen and keyboard brightness (as oppose to volume level) are not preserved during reboot or X restart. Not sure if this is because of the special macbook settings or there is no provision for that at all in fatdog.
I add some little code to read and save the /sys/... settings in rc.shutdown and wmexit and an /etc/xdg/Startup/ script to restore them, but I was wondering if there is a more appropriate approach

[step]

Hello fatdog team
I noticed that the screen and keyboard brightness (as oppose to volume level) are not preserved during reboot or X restart. Not sure if this is because of the special macbook settings or there is no provision for that at all in fatdog.
I add some little code to read and save the /sys/... settings in rc.shutdown and wmexit and an /etc/xdg/Startup/ script to restore them, but I was wondering if there is a more appropriate approach

There's /etc/brightness.conf and fatdog-brightness.sh - also available in Control Panel > Display.
/etc/brightness.conf is for root's settings. For other users settings are kept in $HOME/.fatdog/brightness.conf.

[retiredt00]

There's /etc/brightness.conf and fatdog-brightness.sh - also available in Control Panel > Display.
/etc/brightness.conf is for root's settings. For other users settings are kept in $HOME/.fatdog/brightness.conf.

Dear step thank you for the information
Are you suggesting that at least for the screen instead of writting an independent file and recall cript I should just try to echo the brightness level directly in /etc/brightness.conf or just call fatdog-brightness.sh from rc.hutdown and wmexit to save the last setting?

Unrelated, but how to you add the "@" before a user's handle

[step]

There's /etc/brightness.conf and fatdog-brightness.sh - also available in Control Panel > Display.
/etc/brightness.conf is for root's settings. For other users settings are kept in $HOME/.fatdog/brightness.conf.

Dear step thank you for the information
Are you suggesting that at least for the screen instead of writting an independent file and recall cript I should just try to echo the brightness level directly in /etc/brightness.conf or just call fatdog-brightness.sh from rc.hutdown and wmexit to save the last setting?

Hmm, no need to involve rc.shutdown or independent save/recall scripts.

• 1. Rename the scripts so they don't get in the way.

• 2. Start fatdog-brightness from control panel or command line, it's the same thing.
  Assuming default configuration, and that you're running as root, you will the this picture

  

  brightness-20240206.png (8.85 KiB) Viewed 280 times

  The picture matches the default brightness configuration, which is automatically saved to /etc/brighness.conf:

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  ### control file by brightness-set
  # This file used for root.
  # For non-root, the file in $HOME/.fatdog/brightness.conf is used
  #
  
  # sysfs device path, blank: use /sys/class/backlight
  DEVPATH=
  
  # sysfs backlight device, e.g. radeon_bl0, acpi_video0, etc. 
  # Blank: auto (first one found)
  DEVICE=
  
  # For root-only, uncomment to use xbackglight instead of sysfs.
  # Non-root always use xbacklight
  #USE_XBACKLIGHT=yes
  
  # step-size for brightness-up and down
  STEPSIZE=10 
  
  # Default brightness (this will be changed by brightness-set)
  BRIGHTNESS=100
  

  See line BRIGHTNESS=100 at the end of the file above.

• 3. Now slide the slider to 75%

  

  brightness-20240206-001.png (8.91 KiB) Viewed 280 times

  and press OK. This will save the new brightness value to /etc/brighness.conf

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  ... [cut out]...
  # Default brightness (this will be changed by brightness-set)
  BRIGHTNESS=75
  

  This should be enough to restore 75% brightness when you reboot provided that you save the session to your savefile.

  /etc/brightness.conf also allows setting DEVPATH, STEPSIZE and DEVICE if the your hardware needs special attention. On my macbook 2012 I edit in the value STEPSIZE=1 otherwise slider tuning is too coarse. This change is affected after restarting fatdog-brightness.

  Unrelated, but how to you add the "@" before a user's handle

  You don't: let the forum do it for you. When you're editing your post, type @ and you should see a small popup saying "No match found". Keep typing immediately after @, for instance type r and pause. The forum will show a list of all member names starting with r. Keep typing to narrow your search. Finally select a name from the list. Then the forum will enter a a "mention" bbcode, something like

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  [smention u=<number>]retiredt00[/smention]

  .

[retiredt00]

Dear step thank you for the detailed explanations.
Going back to the original issue the brightness level in /etc/brightness.conf is not considered during boot up and the screen uses some default value from somewhere else (bootloader, initrd).
Maybe some code should be added in /etx/xdg/Startup/script> to address this