Enabling services in sidux

Services get updated whenever a dist-upgrade is done. Any other services that were disabled pre dist-upgrade will also become enabled.

To start a service for a session use, or to manage what services are enabled and disabled at startup.

invoke-rc.d service start

or

rcconf

Note on using rcconf: Use: arrows to move up/down, space to select/deselect, tab to highlight, ok or cancel, `enter` to apply changes

You can also use sidux Control Centre

Killing a service or process

pkill is very useful as its human readable and can work in both user and root mode in the terminal or at tty

pkill -n service

If you are not sure of the correct spelling of the process or service you wish to kill pkill <tab> <tab> will provide a list

htop is also good a alternative. (killall -9 is your last alternative).

sidux runlevels - init

This is the list for the sidux operating system runlevels, please note that it does differ from debian stable runlevels:

Lost root passwords

You cannot recover the lost password but you can set a new one.

First boot from the Live-CD.

As root mount your root partition (for example /dev/hdb2)

# mount /dev/hdb2
Now chroot into your old root-Partition with
# chroot /media/hdb2 passwd
and set a new password:

Fonts in sidux

Correct dpi settings - Basic Philosophy

DPI settings are problematic to guess, but are actually perfectly done by X, if DisplaySize provides physical screen dimensions in /etc/X11/xorg.conf "Monitor Section".

Correct resolutions and refresh rates

Every monitor has its own perfect settings combination, but unfortunately not all of them report the right DCC values, and sometimes it is in need of a manual overwride.

Correct graphics adapter drivers

Some newer ATI and Nvidia cards simply don't play well with the free Xorg drivers, and the only reasonable solution in such case are the commercial closed source drivers. sidux will not pre-install those for legal reasons, The solutions can be found here.

Default Font selections, rendering and sizes

sidux uses (Debian) pre-selected free fonts which have proved to be very balanced, your own fonts selection can/may deteriorate the quality of rendering. But there are a few powerful options in Debian (apart from settings in kcontrol) that can help providing spotless rendering with other fonts as well. But please be aware that every font has just a few real perfect sizes, other sizes may not play well.

Playing with the dpi size with the command may also be of assistance:

fix-dpi-kdm

It should show the DPI for your screensize, but you can play with that as well.You will need to go to init 3 and back to init 5 to make it work or do a reboot.

After having changed font type or DPI (in X or Firefox/Iceweasel), you might need some readjustments to get results to your liking, especially. after a change from Bitmap Fonts to True Type Fonts or the other way round through:

dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config

Choose native and autohinter on automatic. Otherwise play around with it.

Should you need to rebuild your font cache:

fc-cache -f -vv

If that does not work you might need to reinstall the package with a default config file of your fonts cache by:

apt-get install --reinstall --yes -o DPkg::Options::=--force-confmiss -o DPkg::Options::=--force-confnew fontconfig fontconfig-config
GTK based applications like Firefox/Icewasel

GTK-based apps in general are problematic with KDE defaults. This could be solved by this:

apt-get install gtk2-engines gtk-qt-engine

In the control center you will have a new gtk menu item, set it to use clearlooks and have the fonts set to use KDE fonts.

In case of stability problems which occured in the past, but not since 2006 please remove or purge gtk-qt-engine, the settings are are kept in $HOME , and there are no dependencies which could be removed by it:

apt-get remove gtk-qt-engine
or
apt-get remove --purge gtk-qt-engine

This MAY fix your font rendering in gtk apps

CUPS

KDE has a large section inbuilt in the KDE help, however dist-upgrades often can cause cups to misbehave, this is one known solution,:

modprobe lp
echo lp >> /etc/modules 
apt-get remove --purge cupsys cups
apt-get install cups 
        OR
apt-get install cups cupsys-driver-gutenprint hplip

Then in a web browser: 

http://localhost:631

Make sure CUPS is running:

/etc/init.d/cups restart

Another gotcha is when setting up cups via the GUI method, is that it brings up a dialog box asking for you to put in your password, however the dialog box has your user name, prefilled, so when you put in your user password, it does not work, What is really wants is for you to change the user name to root and put in your root password.

and there is more on the sidux forums.

Content last revised 18/09/2008 1500hrs UTC