Install and Configure hd-idle on Fedora

hd-idle is a useful program if you want to spin down hard disks after a defined time period.
It is available in fedora repositories. Therefore you can install it using dnf command,

dnf install hd-idle

systemd unit file is available in below path,

/usr/lib/systemd/system/hd-idle.service

The configuration file is available in below path,

/etc/sysconfig/hd-idle

man page of hd-idle (man hd-idle) describes the usage of hd-idle program. It has capability to define a default idle time for all the disks and define idle time for disks individually.

The default log file path is,

/var/log/hd-idle/hd-idle.log

All the informatiion about this utility can be found here,

http://hd-idle.sourceforge.net/

E3372 USB Modem not working issue on Fedora 26

Today I installed Fedora 26 on my Laptop (HP EliteBook).  After that I wanted to connect my USB Modem E3372 to connect to the internet. Ah! Surprise!! It didn't work. Whenever I tried to enable the connection through the GUI, it stopped connecting immediately. This modem had no issues with Fedora 25 installed on my Desktop.

After analyzing the logs (journalctl -xe) I was able to find the issue.  Actually a required plugin was not installed with the OS installation or even with the dnf upgrade I did after the OS installation.

Oct 20 17:21:57 localhost.localdomain NetworkManager[739]: <info>  [1508534517.2585] device (ttyUSB0): state change: config -> ip-config (reason 'none', internal state 'managed')
Oct 20 17:21:57 localhost.localdomain NetworkManager[739]: <warn>  [1508534517.2586] device (ttyUSB0): interface ttyUSB1 not up for IP configuration
Oct 20 17:21:57 localhost.localdomain NetworkManager[739]: <info>  [1508534517.2586] (ttyUSB0): using modem-specified IP timeout: 20 seconds
Oct 20 17:21:57 localhost.localdomain NetworkManager[739]: <error> [1508534517.2587] (ttyUSB0): error starting PPP: the PPP plugin /usr/lib64/NetworkManager/libnm-ppp-plugin.so is not installed
Oct 20 17:21:57 localhost.localdomain NetworkManager[739]: <info>  [1508534517.2588] device (ttyUSB0): state change: ip-config -> failed (reason 'ppp-start-failed', internal state 'managed')
Oct 20 17:21:57 localhost.localdomain NetworkManager[739]: <warn>  [1508534517.2593] device (ttyUSB0): Activation: failed for connection

The library is provided by a package called NetworkManager-ppp

dnf provides /usr/lib64/NetworkManager/libnm-ppp-plugin.so
Last metadata expiration check: 1:06:38 ago on Fri 20 Oct 2017 04:27:22 PM EDT.
NetworkManager-ppp-1:1.8.2-1.fc26.x86_64 : PPP plugin for NetworkManager
Repo        : updates
Matched from:
Filename    : /usr/lib64/NetworkManager/libnm-ppp-plugin.so

NetworkManager-ppp-1:1.8.0-6.fc26.x86_64 : PPP plugin for NetworkManager
Repo        : fedora
Matched from:
Filename    : /usr/lib64/NetworkManager/libnm-ppp-plugin.so


Then I installed the package

[root@localhost ~]# dnf install  NetworkManager-ppp

Here we go. The modem started to working.!!!

Things I did after installing Fedora 24

Removed evolution application since I don't use it.

dnf remove evolution

Configure RPMFusion repo

wget https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-24.noarch.rpm

rpm -ivh rpmfusion-free-release-24.noarch.rpm 

Upgrade the system

dnf upgrade

Install Intel Linux graphic drivers

wget https://download.01.org/gfx/fedora/24/x86_64/intel-graphics-update-tool-2.0.3-24.intel20163.x86_64.rpm
rpm -ivh intel-graphics-update-tool-2.0.3-24.intel20163.x86_64.rpm 
Run intel-graphics-update-tool command as root and install the Intel drivers

Install VLC and configure hardware acceleration

Read the instructions here,
http://swapoff.blogspot.com/2017/01/how-to-enable-hardware-acceleration-in.html

Install Google Chrome

rpm -ivh google-chrome-stable_current_x86_64.rpm 

warning: google-chrome-stable_current_x86_64.rpm: Header V4 DSA/SHA1 Signature, key ID 7fac5991: NOKEYerror: Failed dependencies: lsb >= 4.0 is needed by google-chrome-stable-55.0.2883.87-1.x86_64

Install redhat-lsb as well if you receive above error when you try to install Google Chrome.

dnf provides lsb

dnf install redhat-lsb

Install Gnome Tweak Tool and configure it to show files on Desktop

dnf install gnome-tweak-tool

Disable dnf-makecache service

systemctl status dnf-makecache.service

systemctl status dnf-makecache.timer

More information is avaiable here,

http://swapoff.blogspot.com/2015/09/disable-automatic-package-metadata.html

Disable automatic package metadata update in Fedora

Sometimes my internet speed becomes slow when I use Fedora after a system reboot. Once this happens, I experienced the effect even though all the network related applications are closed. My internet connection is not a super fast, so it annoyed me a lot. I wanted to find out the reason behind this issue.

Step 1: use netstat to identify the PID/applications which have opened TCP connections,

[root@desktop9 ~]# netstat -anp -t
Active Internet connections (servers and established)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address           Foreign Address         State       PID/Program name    
tcp        0      0 192.168.0.1:53          0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      1252/dnsmasq        
tcp       13      0 192.168.1.9:48208       192.168.1.50:445        CLOSE_WAIT  6776/gvfsd-smb      
tcp        0      0 192.168.1.9:44632       137.189.4.14:80         ESTABLISHED 10934/python        
tcp        0      0 192.168.1.9:44635       137.189.4.14:80         CLOSE_WAIT  10934/python        
tcp        0      0 192.168.1.9:44690       137.189.4.14:80         CLOSE_WAIT  10934/python        
tcp       13      0 192.168.1.9:36304       192.168.1.50:139        CLOSE_WAIT  6769/gvfsd-smb-brow

The output shows that the process 10934/python has a established connection with destination 137.189.4.14:80.

Step 2: Use ps command to find out more information of this process

[root@desktop9 ~]# ps -efw | grep 10934
root     10934     1  0 18:56 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/python -OO /usr/bin/dnf -v makecache timer
root     11204 11153  0 19:02 pts/0    00:00:00 grep --color=auto 10934

The output shows the culprit. it was "/usr/bin/dnf -v makecache timer"

The man page of dnf describes makecache downloads and caches in binary format metadata for all known repos available in the system.

Man page output:

       dnf [options] makecache
              Downloads and caches in binary format metadata for all known repos. Tries to avoid downloading whenever possible (e.g. when the local  metadata
              hasn't expired yet or when the metadata timestamp hasn't changed).

       dnf [options] makecache timer
              Like  plain  makecache but instructs DNF to be more resource-aware, meaning will not do anything if running on battery power and will terminate
              immediately if it's too soon after the last successful makecache run (see dnf.conf(8), metadata_timer_sync).


It seems that the dnf makecache is scheduled to run after every reboot. I decided to disable this and do manual metadata updates whenever it's required.

Command to disable dnf-makecache.service:

systemctl disable dnf-makecache.service 

Update 1: Disable the dnf-makecache.timer as well. Otherwise the service will be restarted.

systemctl disable dnf-makecache.timer

Update 2: I started using Fedora 29 Server edition and noted packagekit is also involved in this.
Therefore I disabled them as well,

systemctl disable packagekit.service
systemctl disable packagekit-offline-update.service