PROBLEM

You get this when trying to SSH to a host from some IP (Let’s assume it’s 111.22.33.44 for the scope of this problem):

ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

What to do?

SOLUTION

It had to do with security and /etc/hosts.allow in my case.  The steps are:

• vi /etc/hosts.allow (Or if you prefer nano /etc/hosts.allow OR pico /etc/hosts.allow)
• Add lines at the end such as:

# My Remote Host
sshd: 111.22.  

• Above are examples of IP octets.  We are using 111.22 if the remote IP is 111.22.33.44 and CIDR is 111.22.0.0/16)
• Save the file and exit (In VI use :wq! )
• Try again from the IP of the remote host (In the above case, 111.22.33.44 )

Or at least that was the source of the issue for me.  Hope it helps!

Good Luck!
TK

PROBLEM

A little tidbit of Windows knowledge.  When highlighting a section of a Microsoft Word document and pressing the delete key, nothing happens.  No errors or messages at all.  Try this to fix it…

SOLUTION

Here’s the workaround to this issue:

• Go to Tools -> Options-> General Tab
• Uncheck the following options if selected (See Image Below):
  • Help for WordPerfect users
  • Navigation keys for WordPerfect users

• Click OK and try to delete again.
• If above doesn’t work, try unchecking Typing Replaces Selection instead from Tools -> Options -> Edit Tab

Cheers!
TK

Skype is a popular text, video and voice (VoIP) chat client.  A more detailed article can be found on the Wikipedia Skype page.  Here is a list of some of the hurdles I’ve ran into getting the client to work on my own distribution.

PROBLEM

Skype for Linux had poor video in the not so distant past so having upgrade to Fedora 12 recently, I’ve decided to see if my setup still worked fine.  So the typical problem you might run into is that Skype will simply crash when doing anything with a webcam (When using a command like # /usr/bin/skype & or from your UI menus which defaults to that command anyway).  Here’s one way how to resolve this issue that worked for me.

SOLUTION

If you’re using KDE, like me, run the following from the console to check, at first, if the Skype client can actually detect and use your camera (Make sure you have one first.).  Follow these steps:

1. Open Konsole (/usr/bin/konsole) terminal emulator from KDE or any other terminal emulator you may have.
    
2. Ensure you have Skype installed.  Type below to make sure (I’m running Fedora 12 but the FC5 package works anyway):
   # rpm -aq|grep -i skype
   skype-2.0.0.72-fc5.i586
   # ll /usr/bin/skype
   3804084 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 13951916 2008-05-28 06:29 /usr/bin/skype
    
3. Check to ensure you have the v4l libraries installed.  (These will be important in getting Video working)
   # ll /usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so
   4506233 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4320 2009-10-25 04:24 /usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so
   # rpm -fq /usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so
   libv4l-0.6.3-1.fc12.i686
   (NOTE: If you don’t have the above package installed, run yum install libv4l to get it installed.  The corresponding command would be apt-get on Ubuntu since yum is likely not available there)
    
4. Run Skype manually using
   # env LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so nice -n 19 /usr/bin/skype &
    
5. Following above, within Skype, open the Video Devices Options page and follow these steps:
   • Click Skype Start Menu (bottom left blue icon)
   • Click Options
   • Click Video Devices
   • Select the webcam camera you have or want to use if you have more then one.
   • Click Test in the video test rectangle.
6. You should now see results similar to the below:

7. If the above works, with the new parameters, you can consider updating your KDE menus to reflect the change in the manner below (So the environment is set each time you start Skype):
   • From the KDE start menu, search for KMenuEdit.  If no icon exists, try to start it from the command line using /usr/bin/kmenuedit.
   • Search for your Skype icon.  Mine was under the Internet submenu.
   • Edit your settings similarly to the below screenshot (You can skip adding nice -n 19 if you don’t want to use any grace value):

PROBLEM

Another issue I was having is after installing Skype from Skype.com.  After installing, I got

"p2p connect failed" skype

Using Fedora 7 skype RPM from Skype.com (Note you can install older Fedora packages on newer Fedora distributions):

# wget http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-fc7
# rpm -ivh skype-2.0.0.72-fc5.i586.rpm
warning: skype-2.0.0.72-fc5.i586.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID d66b746e
Preparing…                ########################################### [100%]
   1:skype                  ########################################### [100%]
# rpm -aq|grep skype
skype-2.0.0.72-fc5.i586
#

Trying to connect gave:

"p2p connect failed" skype

SOLUTION

Edit the file: /home/YOURFOLDER/.Skype/shared.xml and there change:

<DisablePort80>1</DisablePort80>

TO

<DisablePort80>0</DisablePort80>
 

To resolve the public key issue, try these steps:

1. Get the public key from http://www.skype.com/products/skype/linux/rpm-public-key.asc:
2. Run rpm –import rpm-public-key.asc
3. Optionally update yum with these settings through /etc/yum.conf:
   [skype]
   name=Skype Repository
   baseurl=http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/fedora/3/updates/i586/
4. Refresh yum using:
   # yum install skype

And try again. 

Good Luck!
TK

Fedora 12 has been out of the oven since about Nov 17 so it’s high time I upgrade before it spoils.  As with the previous release, I look forward to any new features in KDE 4.3.  (As you recall from the previous upgrades, KDE was introduced rewritten almost entirely in Qt4).  Also noteworthy to mention is the issues in ATI graphics that popped up after upgrading.  Hopefully the community has had time to catch up as at the time support for my old Radeon 9600 was dropped and after some searches at the time not even ATI was maintaining support for Linux drivers for the family of chipsets of the cards.  Unfortunately, there was even some division around how cards like Radeon are supported from Linus himself.  (As far as I’m concerned David can do what he wants  just like Linus did  ).
See the previous upgrade from Fedora 10 and Fedora 11 on some of the more recent issues then so you can decide further if using the default supplied Radeon drivers is enough or if you prefer to stay with the current version or wait for F13.  Fedora 12 has some kernel improvements in versions 2.6.30+ that I would like to take advantage off as well since upgrading to F11, fglrx no longer supported my card and I couldn’t scrape enough time to tinker around with the Xorg default graphics and their 3D support (And so my Tux Racer didn’t work.  :( much to the disappointment of my kids. )  ‘ATI R600/R700 3D and KMS support and other graphic improvements’ have been added to this version to, hopefully, resolve some of my woes:

QUICK STEPS

1. nice -n 19 yum update (If you get No Packages marked for Update you are good.)
2. cd /some/dir
3. mkdir ./F11toF12
4. cd ./F11toF12
5. Ensure you have debuglevel=10 and errorlevel=10 enabled in /etc/yum.conf in case we need more debugging information.
6. nice -n 19 yum -y upgrade (should be the same as step 1 above)
7. nice -n 19 yum clean all
8. nice -n 19 yum clean all (Just to make sure everything looks clean)
9.  wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/12/Fedora/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-12-1.noarch.rpm
10. wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/12/Fedora/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-notes-12.0.0-4.fc12.noarch.rpm 
11. rpm -Uvh fedora-release*.rpm
12. cat /etc/fedora-release  (Make sure ‘Fedora release 12 (Constantine)‘ appears )
13. nice -n 19 yum -y upgrade 2>&1|tee -a ./F11-to-F12-upgrade.Dec.31.2009.10.00.AM.txt
14. Refer below for any issues and repeat from step 12) as necessary.

RUNNING INTO PROBLEMS

The problems are generally similar throughout the upgrades.  Most issues can be resolved by removing the conflicting package as I did in this case, once I decided that I can reinstall the package after the upgrade anyway:

# cat /etc/*fedora-release*
Fedora release 11 (Leonidas)
# rpm -Uvh fedora-release*.rpm
warning: fedora-release-12-1.noarch.rpm: Header V3 RSA/SHA256 signature: NOKEY, key ID 57bbccba
error: Failed dependencies:
        indexhtml is needed by (installed) lynx-2.8.6-20.fc11.i586
You have new mail in /var/spool/mail/root
# rpm -e lynx-2.8.6-20.fc11.i586
# rpm -Uvh fedora-release*.rpm
warning: fedora-release-12-1.noarch.rpm: Header V3 RSA/SHA256 signature: NOKEY, key ID 57bbccba
Preparing…                ########################################### [100%]
   1:fedora-release         ########################################### [ 50%]
   2:fedora-release-notes   ########################################### [100%]
# cat /etc/fedora-release
Fedora release 12 (Constantine)
#

As in previous upgrades, some RPM packages don’t make the cut or have not yet been redied for the latest release.  So a short list of package errors ensued after trying to upgrade through step 13:

Error: Missing Dependency: lohit-fonts-bengali is needed by package fonts-bengali-2.1.5-3.fc8.noarch (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libkrb4.so.2 is needed by package krbafs-utils-1.2.2-10.1.i386 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libkrb4.so.2(krb4_2_MIT) is needed by package krbafs-1.2.2-10.1.i386 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: lohit-fonts-hindi is needed by package fonts-hindi-2.1.5-3.fc8.noarch (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libdes425.so.3(des425_3_MIT) is needed by package krbafs-utils-1.2.2-10.1.i386 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libkrb4.so.2 is needed by package krbafs-1.2.2-10.1.i386 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: lohit-fonts-gujarati is needed by package fonts-gujarati-2.1.5-3.fc8.noarch (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: lohit-fonts-punjabi is needed by package fonts-punjabi-2.1.5-3.fc8.noarch (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libcrypto.so.8 is needed by package VirtualBox-OSE-3.0.10-1.fc11.i586 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libkrb4.so.2(krb4_2_MIT) is needed by package krbafs-utils-1.2.2-10.1.i386 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libssl.so.8 is needed by package gpac-libs-0.4.5-7.fc11.i586 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libdes425.so.3 is needed by package krbafs-utils-1.2.2-10.1.i386 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libcrypto.so.8 is needed by package gpac-libs-0.4.5-7.fc11.i586 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: lohit-fonts-tamil is needed by package fonts-tamil-2.1.5-3.fc8.noarch (installed)
 

For this one I simply went over the packages on the right side and removed them.  (Again, if a package is really needed, you would need to judge whether removal is appropriate for you.)  I used rpm -e <PACKAGE NAME> to remove the package.  Rerunning the upgrade produced this:

 Error: Missing Dependency: lohit-fonts-punjabi is needed by package fonts-punjabi-2.1.5-3.fc8.noarch (installed)

Removing the installed package, allowed me to upgrade to pass that point and continue further.  Following the above, the upgrade completed flawlessly (minus some custom RPM’s I had installed earlier) .  Best of all, my graphics were again restored though tweaking them, I’ll leave for another topic. 

Cheers!
TK

Following a recent upgrade, Xorg was apparently also updated to version xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.6.1.901-1.fc11.i586 which unfortunately didn’t play nicely with version xorg-x11-drv-ati-6.12.2-14.fc11.i586 .  After a brief investigation, the combination resulted in this error:

 /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers//radeon_drv.so: undefined symbol: DRIOpenDRMMaster

Ultimately, this had the following effect:

• No GUI (System never got as far as showing any graphics let alone KDE, Gnome etc)
• No Keyboard functionality: Couldn’t open console window with CTRL-ALT-F1-9 keys.
• No mouse functionality.
• No error message on the screen.  Just an empty screen.

Not good.  The system was frozen and unresponsive and nothing I tried on the terminal did anything.  Here’s how to go a about solving this issue.

SOLUTION

The quick solution to this, as it turned out after a more extensive investigation, was to update the Xorg RPM’s.  Here’s the procedure:

• wget ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/fedora/updates/testing/11/i386/xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.6.2-3.fc11.i586.rpm
• wget ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/fedora/updates/testing/11/i386/xorg-x11-server-common-1.6.2-3.fc11.i586.rpm
• rpm -Uvh xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.6.2-3.fc11.i586.rpm xorg-x11-server-common-1.6.2-3.fc11.i586.rpm

Following the above, you’ll either need a restart or to simply run:

• init 3
• Then init 5

First, this will bring you to level 3 or non GUI stage of the boot up process.  init 5 will bring you to the GUI stage where you can login to your favorite UI like KDE or GNOME.  And that resolved the issue for me.

Wait!  How do I get into my system now if the keyboard, mouse and video aren’t working?

There are really two ways I used.  First option was to use another computer on my home network to get into the problematic PC so I can get things fixed up:

• In a Windows PC, I installed PUTTY.  You can get the application from here.
• Using PUTTY, SSH to your Workstation over your home network. 
• You should now be into your Workstations CLI.

The second way was to edit the boot grub startup options when the system starts up so you end up in init level 1.  Here’s how to do this:

• Start up your system.  When the GRUB menu comes up, use the arrow keys to highlight the kernel you want to boot.
• Instead of clicking ENTER on the kernel, press the letter e.  This will let you edit the boot parameters.
• You may see a label that looks like this: kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.29.6-217.2.3.fc11.i586 ro root=LABEL=/
• Add single to the end of it including a space in front to make it look like this:
  kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.29.6-217.2.3.fc11.i586 ro root=LABEL=/ single
• Now press enter to confirm the settings then press the b key to boot the above line.  This will bring you to the command line init level 1 of the system.  (init 5 is the GUI you can’t start on account of above problem)

INVESTIGATION

The investigation for this one was a bit tricky and lengthy.  For one, /var/log/Xorg.0.log had no errors or warnings applicable to the above.  There were basically no WW or EE marked items in the above file.  The WW stands for warning and the EE stands for error.  There was no messages on the screen either.  Naturally since this appears video related, I look into /etc/X11/xorg.conf but don’t notice any changes there.  First I try to copy this xorg.conf file out to old.xorg.conf and restart so the system regenerates it’s own config file.  That doesn’t work either so I know my xorg.conf couldn’t be at fault.  Checking the main system log /var/log/messages yielded many of these:

Aug  9 07:06:26 lhs gdm-binary[2930]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: display lasted 0.234230 seconds
Aug  9 07:06:26 lhs gdm-binary[2930]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: display lasted 0.201843 seconds
Aug  9 07:06:26 lhs gdm-binary[2930]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: display lasted 0.203118 seconds
Aug  9 07:06:26 lhs gdm-binary[2930]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: display lasted 0.202416 seconds
Aug  9 07:06:27 lhs gdm-binary[2930]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: display lasted 0.205379 seconds
Aug  9 07:06:27 lhs gdm-binary[2930]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: display lasted 0.215556 seconds
Aug  9 07:06:27 lhs gdm-binary[2930]: WARNING: GdmLocalDisplayFactory: maximum number of X display failures reached: check X server log for errors
Aug  9 07:06:27 lhs init: prefdm main process (2930) terminated with status 1
Aug  9 07:06:27 lhs init: prefdm main process ended, respawning

Notice prefdm and gdm-binary.  I really had no idea what these were but possibly these could just be scripts.  So a quick search:

$ locate prefdm
/etc/X11/prefdm
/etc/event.d/prefdm
$

Quickly checking the files it’s clear they are both scripts and /etc/event.d/prefdm calls /etc/X11/prefdm.  Editing /etc/X11/prefdm it’s clear it calls /etc/sysconfig/desktop which has this setting on my system:

$ cat /etc/sysconfig/desktop
DESKTOP=KDE
DISPLAYMANAGER=GNOME

# DISPLAYMANAGER = GNOME
# DISPLAYMANAGER = KDE
# DISPLAYMANAGER = WDM
# DISPLAYMANAGER = XDM
You have new mail in /var/spool/mail/root
$

So what does all of this mean for us?  Unfortunately, not that much however it does tell us the sequence the startup is taking towards the error.  At this point it could be anything and I’m not much closer to what is really causing this problem for me.  So the next thing I do is try to find other log files that could point me further in the right direction:

• cd /var/log
• ls -al Xorg*

which results in a bunch of Xorg files one of which is /var/log/Xorg.setup.log.  Checking this file I see:

$ cat Xorg.setup.log

X.Org X Server 1.6.1.901 (1.6.2 RC 1)
Release Date: 2009-5-8
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.18-128.1.6.el5 i686
Current Operating System: Linux lhs.localhostservers 2.6.29.6-217.2.3.fc11.i586 #1 SMP Wed Jul 29 15:46:46 EDT 2009 i686
Kernel command line: ro root=LABEL=/
Build Date: 18 May 2009  02:47:59PM
Build ID: xorg-x11-server 1.6.1.901-1.fc11
        Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
        to make sure that you have the latest version.
Markers: (–) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
        (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
        (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(++) Log file: "/dev/null", Time: Wed Aug 12 22:55:23 2009
(++) Using config file: "/tmp/tmpYZhMwdxorg.config"
/usr/bin/Xorg: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers//radeon_drv.so: undefined symbol: DRIOpenDRMMaster
$

which seams to indicate the problem is with either /usr/bin/Xorg or the /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/radeon_drv.so.  In fact, at the same time I notice a /var/log/gdm folder and checking files there also shows the same errors.  The radeon driver is the standard radeon driver supplied with Fedora from the Xorg project.  There is an issue with the log file however, it’s slightly old and doesn’t match my last system restart so possibly it’s not related.  So to confirm, I run /usr/bin/Xorg to see if it truly shows the same error and it does:

$ /usr/bin/Xorg
X.Org X Server 1.6.1.901 (1.6.2 RC 1)
Release Date: 2009-5-8
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.18-128.1.6.el5 i686
Current Operating System: Linux lhs.localhostservers
2.6.29.6-217.2.3.fc11.i586
#1 SMP Wed Jul 29 15:46:46 EDT 2009 i686
Kernel command line: ro root=LABEL=/
Build Date: 18 May 2009  02:47:59PM
Build ID: xorg-x11-server 1.6.1.901-1.fc11
        Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
        to make sure that you have the latest version.
Markers: (–) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
        (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
        (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Wed Aug 12 22:55:46 2009
(==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"
/usr/bin/Xorg: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers//radeon_drv.so: undefined symbol: DRIOpenDRMMaster
$

Now I know the error is either with /usr/lib/Xorg or with the radeon drivers which is astronomically better then what I initially started with.  Naturally I decide to look into the driver and end up trying a few things that in the end don’t work:

• Get an older copy of the radeon, extract radeon_drv.so then copy it over to the drivers folder above.
• Disable this driver in xorg.conf.
• Try to get and use the ATI drivers.  Unfortunately, ATI decides not to support my card in Kernels 2.6.29 (which is what I now have since F11) so I can’t use those either.  Neither does it appear there will be any fglrx drivers that support R500 or earlier releases of ATI cards!  This is bad since my dependence will be solely on the Radeon drivers from x.org in future releases.

Eventually, I try to look into the /usr/bin/Xorg file.  I do notice the xorg-x11-drv-ati-6.12.2-14.fc11.i586 was installed in a recent update I did on Aug 10th, which would suggest the issue is with the driver, however possibly the X server itself hasn’t caught up yet and is calling DRIOpenDRMMaster incorrectly from the new ATI driver.  A quick look into the http://x.org website quickly reveals some DRI changes in the ATI video drivers, however not exactly in regards to the error I had.  Since I already tried to get updated drivers and that didn’t work, the other thing to do is to find out if there are updated Xorg RPM’s available that could potentially work.  Quickly checking which package holds the Xorg executable yields:

$ rpm -qf /usr/bin/Xorg
xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.6.1.901-1.fc11.i586
$

Following that I visit one of my favorite sites rpmfind.net and end up downloading and updating the above Xorg server file with the above mentioned testing RPM’s in the solution, resolving the issue.

Cheers!
Tom K.

Here we’ll go over how to connect, configure and format a SATA I / II hard drive on Linux.  The intent for this drive ultimately was to share the drive through SAMBA between our home PC’s and to hold home movies from the Sony HDR-SR7 camcorder I have.  Ultimately, I will be using this drive and ffmpeg to convert movies from M2TS format to AVI format using the x264 codec available on Linux.  I’ll need the space.

Here’s how to go about doing just this:

The first thing you will need to do is to connect the drive.  My system already had two drives and I did not want to pack things any tighter as I would like to ensure space between devices.  This is to reduce heat buildup between hardware components.  Here’s an image on how I ended up connecting the whole lot:

The drive I have is an older Western Digital WD2500KS drive that’s been virtually sitting around collecting dust.  The motherboard is a K8V-X SE.  Because the motherboard didn’t support SATA II as I found out after checking the manual, the first order of business was to downgrade the drive to SATA I using the jumper 5-6 settings :

The motherboard supports Raid 0, 1 through SATA I (Version 1.0) however no SATA II (Version 2.0).  No choice here.

LINUX: PREPARING THE DRIVE

Granted, EXT2 filesystem really isn’t the best choice here and when I have time I’ll see if I can change that to either XFS, EXT3 or better yet, EXT4.  Unfortunately, EXT3 and XFS were not available through parted.

Cheers!
Tom K.

There are plenty of ways to share resources and files between two or more computers.  You could do things like:

• Email yourself an attachment.
• Use FTP between the two PC’s.
• Use SSH between the two computers.
• Use sneaker-net: copy the files to Flash Disk, DVD, CD, (gulp) floppy etc. and walk over to the other computer then load them up.
• Copy the file by hand.
• etc (It pretty much just goes downhill from here).

Or you could enable NFS or better yet, as we will discuss here, use SAMBA and share entire folders, allowing you to simply save to a shared folder making the file / folder visible from other PC’s on your network. 

We will therefore do two things over the network in this post using SAMBA:

• Mount Windows shared folders on Linux.
• Map Linux shared folders (Using Map Network Drive… option) on Windows.

This of course will be different then simply mounting partitions on the same machine as we have outlined in Windows / Linux: Mutually accessing various filesystems on the same PC. since will be doing this type of sharing over the network instead of just on the same PC.  In this post we will share folders between Fedora Linux and Windows, though the general config of the applications can apply to other distributions.  Here’s how to get this done:

LINUX : Mounting Shared Windows folders on Linux

Here are the steps in order to get SMB / SAMBA configured on the Linux host to see a windows shared path:

Click below for next page…

]]> http://www.microdevsys.com/WordPress/2009/07/27/networking-sharing-folders-between-windows-and-linux-using-samba/feed/ http://www.microdevsys.com/WordPress/2009/07/11/red-hat-linux-fedora-fedora-10-to-fedora-11-upgrade/ http://www.microdevsys.com/WordPress/2009/07/11/red-hat-linux-fedora-fedora-10-to-fedora-11-upgrade/#comments Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:30:29 +0000 Tom http://www.microdevsys.com/WordPress/?p=1217 Well, Fedora 11 has been out for some time now.  And though I’ve been coping with the new KDE 4.0 deployment, my general experience has left me somewhat unsatisfied, though sure enough, there are good points about it.  Somehow I don’t feel alone but can’t help stick with it.  After all, KDE 4.0 is a COMPLETE rewrite of KDE [...]]]>

Well, Fedora 11 has been out for some time now.  And though I’ve been coping with the new KDE 4.0 deployment, my general experience has left me somewhat unsatisfied, though sure enough, there are good points about it.  Somehow I don’t feel alone but can’t help stick with it.  After all, KDE 4.0 is a COMPLETE rewrite of KDE in Qt4 and this sort of stuff is to be expected. 

With new things comes new apps like KDE 4.3 which I’ve been itching to get my hands on.  So with time permitting, I can get to do some updates in hope of getting lot’s of the old functionality back in KDE or simply adapting to my new environment. 

Without further delay it’s time to do some updates:

Before upgrading to Fedora 11, you may want to read about running into possible ATI issues in F11 and future support of certain graphics cards:

1. nice -n 19 yum update (If you get No Packages marked for Update you are good.)
2. cd /some/dir
3. mkdir ./F10toF11
4. cd ./F10toF11
5. Ensure you have debuglevel=10 and errorlevel=10 enabled in /etc/yum.conf in case we need more debugging information.
6. nice -n 19 yum -y upgrade (should be the same as step 1 above)
7. nice -n 19 yum clean all
8. nice -n 19 yum clean all (Just to make sure everything looks clean)
9. wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/11/Fedora/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-11-1.noarch.rpm
10. wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/11/Fedora/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-notes-11.0.0-2.fc11.noarch.rpm
11. rpm -Uvh fedora-release*.rpm
12. cat /etc/fedora-release  (Make sure ‘Fedora release 11 (Leonidas)‘ appears )
13. nice -n 19 yum -y upgrade 2>&1|tee -a ./F10-to-F11-upgrade.Jul.11.2009.08.09.PM.txt
14. Refer below for any issues and repeat from step 12) as necessary.

RUNNING INTO PROBLEMS

One of the easiest things to do is to run into problems.  If you ever do, try to a search this blog for some solutions I’ve encountered.  For some notable ones that popped up, see the section below.

Aside from the above, this upgrade was no exception to repo errors.  Just a note in case you are new here: CAUTION: Some steps during such upgrades require removal of certain RPM’s.  If it happens that you end up rebooting after deleting an RPM before you fully upgrade, you may end up running into other issues.  You have been warned:

Error Downloading Packages:
  grubby-6.0.87-1.fc11.i586: failure: grubby-6.0.87-1.fc11.i586.rpm from updates: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.
  12:dhcp-devel-4.1.0-22.fc11.i586: failure: dhcp-devel-4.1.0-22.fc11.i586.rpm from updates: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.
  12:dhcp-4.1.0-22.fc11.i586: failure: dhcp-4.1.0-22.fc11.i586.rpm from updates: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.
  blender-2.49a-1.fc11.i586: failure: blender-2.49a-1.fc11.i586.rpm from updates: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.
  12:dhclient-4.1.0-22.fc11.i586: failure: dhclient-4.1.0-22.fc11.i586.rpm from updates: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.
  espeak-1.40.02-2.fc11.i586: failure: espeak-1.40.02-2.fc11.i586.rpm from updates: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.
  gstreamer-plugins-good-0.10.15-3.fc11.i586: failure: gstreamer-plugins-good-0.10.15-3.fc11.i586.rpm from updates: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.
  1:dovecot-1.2.0-1.fc11.i586: failure: dovecot-1.2.0-1.fc11.i586.rpm from updates: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.
  gdb-6.8.50.20090302-33.fc11.i586: failure: gdb-6.8.50.20090302-33.fc11.i586.rpm from updates: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.

So I find by doing some digging ($ locate yum|grep cache) out that it’s storing the updates in /var/cache/yum/updates/packages and go to that folder:

cd /var/cache/yum/updates/packages

Then locate the repos I need off the web.  Unfortunately they’re off the testing repos so if you’re reading this, you should weight the risks using these repos, if it’s right for you before going forward.  I’m running Fedora, bleeding edge stuff, so these are fine for me.  I’ll upgrade later when new updates become available (NOTE: I’m in folder /var/cache/yum/updates/packages when I run below commands effectively saving to this folder:

wget http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/fedora/linux/updates/testing/11/i386/grubby-6.0.87-1.fc11.i586.rpm
wget http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/fedora/linux/updates/testing/11/i386/dhcp-devel-4.1.0-22.fc11.i586.rpm
wget http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/fedora/linux/updates/testing/11/i386/dhcp-4.1.0-22.fc11.i586.rpm
wget http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/fedora/linux/updates/testing/11/i386/blender-2.49a-1.fc11.i586.rpm
wget http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/fedora/linux/updates/testing/11/i386/dhclient-4.1.0-22.fc11.i586.rpm
wget http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/fedora/linux/updates/testing/11/i386/espeak-1.40.02-2.fc11.i586.rpm
wget http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/fedora/linux/updates/testing/11/i386/gstreamer-plugins-good-0.10.15-3.fc11.i586
wget http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/fedora/linux/updates/testing/11/i386/dovecot-1.2.0-1.fc11.i586*
wget http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/fedora/linux/updates/testing/11/i386/dovecot-1.2.0-1.fc11.i586
wget http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/fedora/linux/updates/testing/11/i386/gstreamer-plugins-good-0.10.15-3.fc11.i586.rpm
wget http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/fedora/linux/updates/testing/11/i386/dovecot-1.2.0-1.fc11.i586.rpm

Running the update again, it then resulted in:

Error Downloading Packages:
  1:dovecot-1.2.0-1.fc11.i586: failure: dovecot-1.2.0-1.fc11.i586.rpm from updates: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.
  gdb-6.8.50.20090302-33.fc11.i586: failure: gdb-6.8.50.20090302-33.fc11.i586.rpm from updates: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.

I couldn’t find anything for dovecot and gdb matching the above at the moment, leaving me with only the last sensible thing I could do:

$ rpm -aq|grep dovecot
dovecot-1.1.16-1.fc10.i386
$ rpm -e dovecot-1.1.16-1.fc10.i386
$ rpm -e gdb-6.8-32.fc10.i386
error: Failed dependencies:
        gdb is needed by (installed) kdbg-1:2.1.0-3.fc10.i386
        gdb is needed by (installed) bug-buddy-1:2.24.2-1.fc10.i386
        gdb is needed by (installed) ddd-3.3.11-19.fc10.i386
$ rpm -e kdbg-2.1.0-3.fc10.i38
$ rpm -e bug-buddy-2.24.2-1.fc10.i386
Could not parse file ‘/usr/share/applications/switchdesk.desktop’: Key file contains line ‘????????? ?????????????’ which is not a key-value pair, group, or comment
$ rpm -e gdb-6.8-32.fc10.i386
$

And that moved the upgrade forward.  Moving right along to rerunning step 13 above, we get this:

Transaction Check Error:
  file /usr/bin/keytab-lilo from install of syslinux-3.75-1.fc11.i586 conflicts with file from package lilo-21.4.4-26.i386
  file /etc/rc.d/init.d/iscsi from install of iscsi-initiator-utils-6.2.0.870-8.fc11.i586 conflicts with file from package iscsi-3.1.0.3-4.1.i386
  file /sbin/iscsi-iname from install of iscsi-initiator-utils-6.2.0.870-8.fc11.i586 conflicts with file from package iscsi-3.1.0.3-4.1.i386
  file /sbin/iscsid from install of iscsi-initiator-utils-6.2.0.870-8.fc11.i586 conflicts with file from package iscsi-3.1.0.3-4.1.i386
  file /usr/share/man/man8/iscsid.8.gz from install of iscsi-initiator-utils-6.2.0.870-8.fc11.i586 conflicts with file from package iscsi-3.1.0.3-4.1.i386

If you look closely, there are really two issues here which can be solved in this manner (By deleting the RPM’s to the right of the error above):

$ rpm -e lilo-21.4.4-26.i386
$ rpm -e iscsi-3.1.0.3-4.1.i38

 Rerunning the upgrade, finally gave me after a few hours:

  xorg-x11-drv-spaceorb.i386 0:1.1.0-6.fc9
  xorg-x11-drv-summa.i386 0:1.2.0-2.fc10
  xorg-x11-drv-tek4957.i386 0:1.2.0-1.fc9
  xorg-x11-drv-ur98.i386 0:1.1.0-5.fc9
  xorg-x11-drv-wiimote.i386 0:0.0.1-1.fc9

Complete!
You have new mail in /var/spool/mail/root
$

Sure enough the system booted fine but an old bug (unable to authenticate user) came up that was solved for Fedora 10 earlier.  This time it required another step.  Please see Fedora 10: unable to authenticate user and reenabling the root login access.

POST UPGRADE

If you have not already done this, you may wish to visit the previous Fedora 10 upgrade post for both latest bugs and other issues encountered and remedied after the upgrade.  There is lot’s new in Fedora 8 and above, with Fedora 11 not being an exception to that rule, so this upgrade may not be for all if you plan on using KDE.  KDE 3.X is worlds different then the newly shipped KDE 4.X.  Just a word of caution in case you are fully entrentched in the old KDE 3 functionality. 

A NOTE ABOUT THE ROOT ACCOUNT

Granted we all should be using a non root account.  Eventually, I would like to transition to one.  I can also understand how the open source community would like to keep their reputation of Linux being a safer operating system then windows.  All good things.

In respect of above, I’ve gone quite some time using the root account form above all else, resolving system errors I’ve had.  Thinking back I’ve saved countless of hours not using a plain user account and relying on su or falling into other restrictions thereby resolving issues that much more difficult.  I also do plenty of software configuration and administration which has a rather heavy relieance on previlidged accounts.  So for me, root is essential until I find time to transition my stuff over. 

Cheers!
Tom K.

This is a fine one.  Anyone who uses WordPress may need to deal with this.  Unfortunately, despite using reCAPTCHA, Akismet still picks up tons of span on my blog.  So why am I getting spam comments when I have reCAPTCHA? The answer could surprise you.

I really had no idea, but it turned out reCAPTCHA is marking those that come in as spam and that resulted in them appearing in the Akismet spam folder making it appear that Akismet caught them.  How’s that for mistaken identify!  Some time back when I installed reCAPTCHA all of a sudden ALL comment spam stopped so I could hardly imagine Akismet doing that.  I would imagine spammers are not breaking through the CAPTCHA box but have been reading online that either:

1. CAPTCHA’s are potentially breakable by software.
2. Some foreigh workers get payed to do that sort of spam to make CAPTCHA look breakable.

I really don’t know or would like to believe they are unbreakable.  I do know I’m getting spam and I don’t want it.  So off I go seeing how I can deal with this because:

1. I won’t read, buy or visit any link in a message I feel is spam
2. The only thing I’ll do with it is to try to prevent it when I see it.
3. I really don’t want these things hitting my site generating extra bandwidth to begin with.

I’ve decided to deal with this from the database side using phpMyAdmin of my provider (WORD OF CAUTION: If you haven’t done any sort of SQL before, I recommend you take caution, even though we’re not deleting or modifying anything).  So once I login to phpMyAdmin I select the wp_comments table and run this query:

SELECT distinct comment_author_IP, count(comment_author_IP) as Occurrance
FROM `wp_comments`
WHERE comment_approved LIKE ‘%spam%’
GROUP BY comment_author_IP
ORDER BY Occurrance DESC
LIMIT 0, 500

So with a rather simple query I tried to mimick the results Akismet reports it on the WordPress Dashboard, I get this list of offending IP’s: 

 
So what does someone do with a list like this.  In my case, as I have no access to the firewall on my host, I’m going to use .htaccess to essentially block the IP’s.  Before I just plug all the IP’s there, I’m going to check on some of the less frequently noted IP’s above with this query and omit the ones that have one occurrance.   This should prevent a couple of things:

1. In case a comment within one of the single occurrances is not really spam.
2. I’ll use a rule of thumb and say everything around five occurrances and that is already marked as spam by Akismet is really Spam.
3. I don’t want to get overly complicated and keep a large .htaccess file.

So I use this query to check on a few of the less often ones just to see if they are spam or not:

SELECT *
FROM wp_comments
WHERE comment_author_IP
IN ( ‘194.8.75.161′,
‘86.122.164.46′,
‘70.70.10.78′,
‘114.127.246.36′,
‘194.8.75.159′,
‘194.8.74.133′,
‘212.95.54.40′)
LIMIT 0 , 500

Going over the list quickly, I see it’s all spam.  So everything with two or more occurrances, get’s a spot in my .htaccess file.  I decide to use this query to automate some of the labour and generate the correct .htaccess syntax automagically:

SELECT CONCAT("deny from", " ", comment_author_IP) as Action
FROM wp_comments
WHERE comment_approved LIKE ‘%spam%’
GROUP BY comment_author_IP
HAVING COUNT(comment_author_IP) >= 2
LIMIT 0, 500

 .htaccess relevant code

.
.
.
<Limit GET POST>
order deny,allow
# Old Entries
deny from 209.47.94.52
deny from 72.20.4.30
deny from 92.48.193.55
deny from 87.118.104.158

# New Entries
deny from 114.127.246.36
deny from 194.8.74.133
deny from 194.8.74.171
deny from 194.8.75.141
deny from 194.8.75.159
deny from 194.8.75.161
deny from 212.117.176.186
deny from 212.95.54.40
deny from 70.70.10.78
deny from 86.122.164.46
deny from 91.214.44.201
</Limit>
.
.
.

And that is that.  The only thing that’s left now is to save and upload the new .htaccess file to your web root and see if there is any improvement.

The baffling thing for me is user registrations.  I’ll use a combination of LINUX and SQL here.  I’m interested in all the user names I’m getting that have registered but are listed as spam bots.  I also want to know the IP’s of the registrations but really I would prefer a CAPTCHA style code to filter stuff like this.  So the first thing I get is a list of users that have been registered recently:

SELECT user_email, user_registered, user_nicename
FROM wp_users
WHERE user_login NOT LIKE ‘%admin%’
LIMIT 0 , 100

This gives me something like this:

which I then stick it in some file on my UNIX box called:

# cat ureg.txt
fdghjweudyf@konversia-aero.ru   2009-04-20 06:16:04     analia
draimacleroic@gmail.com         2009-04-20 21:16:31     sopssheerce
changfuuu@gmail.com     2009-04-21 02:08:15     anavoinkemi
actichziniunc@gmail.com         2009-04-21 11:32:10     joannahopkin
katyai4857@atlaskit.com         2009-04-21 13:25:08     hewatmom
qapocahemiekid12763@gmail.com   2009-04-23 06:27:04     kesenasikacusa
.
.
.
#

Now that I have this file, I would like to check if these are legitimate users or spammers:

http://www.stopforumspam.com
http://www.botscout.com

I’ll then use that network and the below tiny script to find out which ones are legitimate and which ones I should get rid of:

 #!/bin/bash

# Short code for checking forum spam user registrations:

currdate=$(date +%d_%m_%Y-%H_%M_%S);
tmpfile=ureg.tran.$currdate.dat;
ipfile=ureg.ip.$currdate.dat;

>$tmpfile;
>$ipfile;
for email in $(cat $1|awk ‘{ print $1 }’); do
        lwp-request "http://www.stopforumspam.com/search?q=$email&export=xml" > $tmpfile;
        if [[ $(cat $tmpfile|egrep "no results found.") != "" ]]; then
                printf "%50s%-30s\n" $email " : ";
        else
                printf "%50s%-30s\n" $email ": LISTED";
                for ipv in $(cat $tmpfile|egrep "<ip>"|sed -e "s/[<>]/ /g"|awk ‘{ print $2 }’|sort|uniq); do
                        echo "$ipv" >> $ipfile;
                done
        fi
        sleep 2;
done

echo -ne "UNIQUE IP’S\n";
cat $ipfile|sort|uniq -c;
/bin/rm $tmpfile

This will give something like:

fdghjweudyf@konversia-aero.ru: LISTED
draimacleroic@gmail.com: LISTED
changfuuu@gmail.com: LISTED
actichziniunc@gmail.com: LISTED
katyai4857@atlaskit.com: LISTED
qapocahemiekid12763@gmail.com: LISTED
payomacon@gmail.com :
rackflinciatt@gmail.com: LISTED

The code also generates an IP file called something like ureg.ip.<DATE>.dat.  The unfortunate thing is that the IP’s from the emails above all vary  with only a few that have the same subnets so it made it impractical to block these single IP’s with .htaccess files.  The reason for this is that most of the IP’s in emails that can be shown in the comments above usually can be and are fake IP addresses that have nothing to do with spam and have been put there by the spammers to confuse things.  So it turned out it simply wasn’t worth blocking the IP’s in the emails though the method did tell me which of the above comments are valid based on whether the email address itself appeared on the above spambot monitoring websites.  This verification was the main thing I wanted that told me the emails typically used in trying to register spam comments.

Least but not last, I’ll add a plugin here called: WP-reCAPTCHA to help handle these when they come in so I don’t have to repeat this procedure too often. 

FAST FORWARD TO THE FUTURE

So what did my spambox look like after about one month.  Here is a basic brakedown:

• Thanks to WP-reCAPTCHA, I received no further spam user registrations.  All gone.  100%.
• Since blocking the IP’s, my Akismet stats now look like this:
  

  Historical Stats

  	Spam detected	Ham detected	Missed spam	False positives
  2009-08	95	0	0	3
  2009-07	92	10	0	0
  2009-06	562	0	0	0
  2009-05	541	1	0	0
  2009-04	814	8	0	0
  2009-03	413	12	0	0
  2009-02	34	4	0	0
  2009-01	13	20	0	0
  2008-12	39	35	0	0
  2008-11	34	0	0	0

So for July, I got about 7 times less spam.  Mind you, 100% of spam got caught and put in the spam bucket.  The stuff above in the Historical Stats is basically those IP’s that are still spamming and not blocked in my .htaccess file and are still getting to the comments post page to attempt to spam. 

What’s also not shown is also a large spike that braught in about 53 comments in on August 4th.  This typically is an indication that it was done from only one or two IP’s.  Running the first SQL above, promptly verified that:

and off it went to the .htaccess file. 

Good Luck!

PROBLEM

Another day brings another bug. This time it’s with the Akonadi server failing or unable to start.  This error followed a recent update I’ve done on my Fedora box.  This is what greeted me each time I started up KDE:

The QtSQL driver ‘QMYSQL’ is required by your current Akonadi server configuration.
The following drivers are installed: QSQLITE, QMYSQL3, QMYSQL.
Make sure the required driver is installed.

Personally, I don’t like uninvited guests, especially the ones that crash the party.  So off I went to see what broke.  The error gave some clues where I should look which included MySQL, akonadi and QtSQL.  Here’s how I went about resolving this one.

SOLUTION

The solution to this one was fairly straightforward.  it followed these steps:

1. Open command console such as konsole
2. Check if you have the config file, run: ls -al /root/.config/akonadi/mysql-local.conf
3. Run echo "user=root" > /root/.config/akonadi/mysql-local.conf
4. Either type kcmshell4 kcm_akonadi on the command line to start Akonadi configuration panel or follow steps 4 & 5 below.
5. Go to KDE Start -> System Settings
6. Under System Settings dialog click the  Advanced tab then Akonadi configuration.
7. Click the Akonadi Server Configuration tab then the Restart button.
    

THE PROCESS

Getting to the solution was another matter alltogether.  The first order of business was to check the akonadi server logs to narrow down the problem:

/root/.local/share/akonadi/akonadiserver.error

Database process existed unexpectedly during intial connection!
executable: "/usr/libexec/mysqld"
arguments: ("–defaults-file=/root/.local/share/akonadi//mysql.conf", "–datadir=/root/.local/share/akonadi/db_data/", "–socket=/root/.local/share/akonadi/db_misc/mysql.socket")
stdout: ""
stderr: "090322 23:25:47 [Warning] option ‘max_join_size’: unsigned value 18446744073709551615 adjusted to 4294967295
090322 23:25:47 [Warning] option ‘max_join_size’: unsigned value 18446744073709551615 adjusted to 4294967295
090322 23:25:47 [ERROR] Fatal error: Please read "Security" section of the manual to find out how to run mysqld as root!

090322 23:25:47 [ERROR] Aborting

090322 23:25:47 [Note] /usr/libexec/mysqld: Shutdown complete

"
exit code: 1
process error: "Unknown error"
"[
0: akonadiserver(_Z10kBacktracev+0x35) [0x8051f75]
1: akonadiserver [0x8052456]
2: [0xc62400]
3: [0xc62416]
4: /lib/libc.so.6(gsignal+0×50) [0x1dd460]
5: /lib/libc.so.6(abort+0×188) [0x1dee28]
6: /usr/lib/libQtCore.so.4(_Z17qt_message_output9QtMsgTypePKc+0×95) [0x5886855]
7: akonadiserver(_ZN15FileDebugStream9writeDataEPKcx+0xc4) [0x8053164]
8: /usr/lib/libQtCore.so.4(_ZN9QIODevice5writeEPKcx+0×9e) [0x59143ce]
9: /usr/lib/libQtCore.so.4 [0x592139e]
10: /usr/lib/libQtCore.so.4(_ZN11QTextStreamD1Ev+0×68) [0x5921698]
11: akonadiserver(_ZN6QDebugD1Ev+0×44) [0x804d674]
12: /usr/lib/libakonadiprivate.so.1(_ZN7Akonadi13AkonadiServer20startDatabaseProcessEv+0×1a8e) [0x3f9e9e]
13: /usr/lib/libakonadiprivate.so.1(_ZN7Akonadi13AkonadiServerC1EP7QObject+0×72) [0x3fbc02]
14: /usr/lib/libakonadiprivate.so.1(_ZN7Akonadi13AkonadiServer8instanceEv+0×56) [0x3fcd06]
15: akonadiserver(main+0×398) [0x804c9e8]
16: /lib/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xe5) [0x1c86e5]
17: akonadiserver [0x804c581]
 

So that error narrowed down the problem alot.  We now know Akonadi wants to run as the root user.  Or at least is trying to run as root in an unsupported manner.  First I checked with MySQL to see what they say about this even though it’s an Akonadi related problem.  Here’s what MySQL has to say about all of this:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/changing-mysql-user.html

Further down the page we see that to run MySQL as root we need to set:

user=user_name

in /etc/my.cnf which for us would amount to user=root in /etc/my.cnf.  The problem with this is that also according to the above MySQL page, you should never run the MySQL server as root.  It’s also fairly common knowledge that MySQL runs as the mysql user on Fedora Linux installations at least .  So let’s see what the Akonadi folks say about this I visit http://pim.kde.org/.  Then choose the Akonadi link when I get there.  Sadly nothing searchable could be dug up.  Let’s try plan B.  Configuration files for applications ran from a user account, typically exist within the users home directory.  So in this case let’s check your ID (Assuming root here).  So we run this command:

# cd ~;find ./ -name *akonadi*
./.kde/share/config/akonadiconsolerc
./.local/share/akonadi
./.local/share/akonadi/db_data/akonadi
./.local/share/akonadi/akonadiserver.error.old
./.local/share/akonadi/akonadiserver.socket
./.config/akonadi
./.config/akonadi/akonadiconnectionrc
./.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc
#

So looks like we have some Akonadi stuff inside our user account.  Great.  Since Akonadi is giving MySQL errors it should be related.  Let’s dig deeper to see what we can find inside above folders:

# cd ~/.config/akonadi/
# find ./ -iname *mysql*
./mysql-local.conf
# cd ~/.local/share/akonadi/
# find ./ -iname *mysql*
./mysql.conf
#

So looks like Akonadi has it’s own mysql configuration files, which is good, and perhaps for it’s own purposes it needs to run as root for a local instance of mysql (What other reason is there for another MySQL config file).  That would be safer.  But which one of the above do I put user=root under.  Checking my system, it was empty of any sort of documentation for Akonadi.  So I try the RPM:

# rpm -aq|grep akonadi
akonadi-1.1.1-1.fc10.i386
# rpm -lq akonadi-1.1.1-1.fc10.i386
.
.
/etc/akonadi/mysql-global.conf
.
.

But all we get is another mysql config file, which isn’t helpful.  We need to know which one we need to set user=root in. 

# vi /root/.local/share/akonadi/mysql.conf
# cat /root/.local/share/akonadi/mysql.conf|head
#
# Global Akonadi MySQL server settings,
# These settings can be adjusted using $HOME/.config/akonadi/mysql-local.conf
#
# Based on advice by Kris Köhntopp <kris@mysql.com>
#
[mysqld]
skip_grant_tables
skip_networking

#

Which gives us the answer (green above) which we were looking for.  Doing the above but for /etc/akonadi/mysql-global.conf instead says the same thing (files are copies of each other).  Hence the SOLUTION above. 

Cheers and Good Luck!