software

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Wed 14 Feb 2007

Acrobat Reader 7 and FC6

Posted by carson under linux , software , system administration , utilities
[4] Comments 

I broke down and wanted to install Adobe Acrobat Reader 7 on my FC6 box to replace xpdf. After installing it from the tar.gz version the acroread startup script bombed out with the error: expr substr 2400000000000 1

After a little searching I didn't find much help so I started looking at the script myself to see if I could track down the problem. It turns out that it wasn't that hard to fix. First off the script file was located at: /usr/bin/acroread

Open the script file and find the function named "check_gtk_ver_and_set_lib_path". This is the location of the first error you will hit. To fix the error you will need to change:

base_version=`expr substr "${base_version}0000000000" 1 $len_version`

to

blah1="${base_version}0000000000"
base_version=${blah1:1:$len_version}

You will find this two places and it needs to be changed in both. If you don't notice the 2nd place it is right after the first in a loop:

while [ $len_version -gt $len_base_version ]; do

The second problem you will have is located in the function "get_gtk_file_ver". Find this function and change the following line:

echo $mfile| sed 's/libgtk-x11-\([0-9]*\).0.so.0.\([0-9]\)00.\([0-9]*\)\|\(.*\)/\1\2\3/g'

to

echo $mfile| sed 's/libgtk-x11-\([0-9]*\).0.so.0.\([0-9]\)000.\([0-9]*\)\|\(.*\)/\1\2\3/g'

Now you should be able to run acroread without errors.

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Thu 11 Jan 2007

Optaros Open Source Catalogue

Posted by carson under Open Source , software
No Comments 

For anyone interested in using open source software in the enterprise Optaros just published their Open Source Catalogue 2007. The paper doesn't cover every project out there but it is a good read and a starting point for others who might want to publish a more comprehensive guide.

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Wed 26 Jul 2006

Making screencasts with Linux

Posted by carson under linux , software , utilities
1 Comment 

After my post about capturing full page screenshots with firefox I started wondering if there was a way to do screencasts using Linux. It just so happens that you can. There are a couple different options if you want a pure movie of your desktop but I was more interested in a flash version. I found what I was looking for with this tutorial on how to record videos of your desktop that uses vnc2swf.

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