Computer Graphics, Linux and Everything…

After downloading Dropbox on Mandriva 2009.1, I got en error message when starting the daemon.

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "__main__dropbox__.py", line 3, in <module>
File "arch/__init__.py", line 20, in <module>
File "arch/linux/startup.py", line 11, in <module>
File "ui/wx_core.py", line 7, in <module>
File "wx/__init__.py", line 45, in <module>
File "wx/_core.py", line 4, in <module>
File "wx/_core_.py", line 14, in <module>
ImportError: /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0: undefined symbol: XRRGetScreenResourcesCurrent

This can be fixed by downloading an experimental build from here
http://forums.getdropbox.com/topic.php?id=7220

Just download, unpack to $HOME/.dropbox-dist
Then run $HOME/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd

EDIT: Even better: download and run this script https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/43645/dbcli.py

I just installed Mandriva 2009.1 and one of the first things I did was to setup my dual monitor the same way I did for the past several versions of Mandriva. But this time, it didn’t work. I mean, it worked, but it didn’t save the xorg.conf and I had to redo the config everytime I logged in. After a bit of work, I found what had changed. Here the new procedure from the begining.

1. In the Mandriva Control Center (drakconf), go to Hardware -> Set Up The Graphical Server.
2. Click Options, check “Enable duplicate display on the second display”. Click OK.
3. Log out, and back in.
4. Open a terminal as root.
5. Type /usr/bin/nvidia-settings
6. Go to “X Server Display Configuration”
7. Select one of the monitors and set its position to “Right of” or “Left of”.
8. Click Apply. You should see something different on both screens.
9. Click “Save to X configuration file”.

Before that, I changed the permissions on the xorg.conf file to be able to write to it as a user. This is what doesn’t work anymore. Something brings back the permissions of that file to root only. So you need to run the nvidia-settings as root. Mandriva should simply ask for your root password when opening this tool, perhaps in the next version.

I finally got to install Dropbox on linux. It’s made for Nautilus (Gnome) so it didn’t work in Mandriva 2009.0. I couldn’t compile the source for some obscure reason (as usual) so I sent them a mail to ask them where I could download the daemon only. Less than 24 hours later, I got the answer:
DropBox daemon Linux 64bit
DropBox daemon Linux 32bit

Dolphin (KDE 4) didn’t require any special config whatsoever, it just worked right away.

I also installed it on my EeePC 901. It also worked but I had to start the process in a shell and leave the shell open to keep the process alive. I’ll have to figure out how to start a process as a service on this little-too-simple linux.