Upgrading Fedora from the command line

I have a Fedora box running and I sort of screwed up the GDM so I was left without a display. Since the Fedora 13 (Goddard) was released recently, I decided to upgrade, from the command line. It kept giving me the error that complained, "Can't open display".

I finally figured out that I needed preupgrade-cli, as specified here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PreUpgrade

The syntax, from the command line is this (as root):
preupgrade-cli "Fedora 13 (Goddard)"

Note the quotes surrounding the argument - you need those to specify the string for the version you want to upgrade to.

Eclipse: GLib-WARNING **: g_set_prgname() called multiple times

While coding a few things using SWT on Eclipse, the console was continuously showing me this error:
g_set_prgname() called multiple times
that too in red - meaning a sort of an error.

This is a nagging problem: especially if you are a code purist like me who loves to see no errors/warnings at all in the code I write. I googled a bit, and the Ubuntu Forums provided the solution: downgrade libglib2.0. I'm quoting from there:

Mark the package you want to downgrade, and choose "Force version ..." from "Package" on the main menu. Select the previous version and it is done.

I am using Karmic Koala (yeah I haven't upgraded to the Maverick LTS yet). So all I needed to do was to select the value from the drop down menu to one that did not say "(updates)". Don't worry, there are only two options and you just have to select the other one. After applying, I got that line marked in yellow in Synaptic. But hey... got rid of a nagging warning! :)

Road rash on Linux using wine

For a lot of us, Roadrash is a game that is going to remain close to our hearts forever! Countless hours spent in front of the PC while kicking and punching others, or even on the LAN fending off your room-mate. For a lot of us, this has been THE introduction to computer video games.

Downloading the game is pretty easy, actually. I got mine at http://www.download-full-games.com/pc/sports/road_rash.html

The tricky part is to get to run it on Linux. In my case, Ubuntu Linux is the only operating system I have: I honestly don't need Windows for much. This game, however, runs only on Windows and so the quintessential wine came to the rescue. So then I unzipped the file and from the command prompt typed:

sudipta@Hogwarts:~/roadrash$ wine ROADRASH.EXE

This unfortunately leads to the "CD-Rom not found" error. The fix to this, as we all know, is to have the registry edited. There is a SETREG.EXE which you can run, but then the state is not persistent. As in, if you run

sudipta@Hogwarts:~/roadrash$ wine SETREG.EXE

sudipta@Hogwarts:~/roadrash$ wine ROADRASH.EXE

Then the registry was just altered when the last wine command was run, not this time. So I opened up the RASH.REG file and found that it contained:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Electronic Arts\RoadRash 95]
@=""
"Path"="D:\\"
"CheckDialup"=hex:00
"ChatState"=hex:02
"MiniDash"=hex:00
"OpponentList"=hex:01 

Which basically means that the above Windows registry value needed editing. This in turn led me back to the .wine folder in my home directory. Lo and behold, there was a system.reg file with lots of Registry-like entries.

sudipta@Hogwarts:~/.wine$ gedit  system.reg

So I simply added a section right on top that said:

[SOFTWARE\\Electronic Arts\\RoadRash 95]
@=""
"Path"="D:\\"
"CheckDialup"=hex:00
"ChatState"=hex:02
"MiniDash"=hex:00
"OpponentList"=hex:01 

This was because there was an entry right on top that said, ";; All keys are relative to \\Machine". And now when I run

sudipta@Hogwarts:~/roadrash$ wine ROADRASH.EXE

I get

Viola! Ah the joys of kicking the next guy off the road... :D