Salix Ratpoison 13.37

[gapan]

I've run wicd-curses, but it doesn't give an opportunity to input WPA/WEP code to connect, so need a suggestion to use something else.

You need to look harder. Press ">" when over your wifi connection.

[ggordon]

Have ratpoison installed....use WPA encryption on my wireless....what command do I use to input WPA and bring up my network?

You need to run wicd. Find it in the ratmenu, or run wicd-curses from a terminal. That's for a full install. If you did a basic install, you'll have to install all wireless related packages yourself first.

I've run wicd-curses, but it doesn't give an opportunity to input WPA/WEP code to connect, so need a suggestion to use something else.

I figured out one has to edit wpa_supplicant.conf to their individual setup and then add it to some init file to get it to load on start-up, etc. etc. -decided it's easier to go back to my previous distro...setting up Salix Ratpoison got to be beyond my current capabilities....but maybe my frustration will point the developers in the right direction.....

[mimosa]

one has to edit wpa_supplicant.conf to their individual setup and then add it to some init file to get it to load on start-up

I don't think you should have to do that. It sounds like your wireless isn't supported out of the box by Salix. I don't know too much about such issues because I've never had any problems with mine, but if you post details of your hardware, someone can probably help. Also, it's possible the information you need is in the forum already. It won't be a problem specific to the Ratpoison edition - any Salix edition should have similar behaviour, as far as I know.

Also, if you already use wicd to connect in your existing distro, it might be worth having a look at the settings there. Under Preferences, I think.

EDIT In Ratpoison, having accessed wicd from the menu, it's right-arrow to access these settings, not shift-c as I thought when I had a look at it just now - that's to Connect. Sorry if this is obvious! It's also *not* '>', at least not on my keyboard. See also

Code: Select all

man wicd-curses

Did you install Full, rather than Basic? It sounds as if you did - otherwise you have to reinvent this particular wheel.

[bklive]

First post, just wanted to register with the forum specifically so I could say that I love this distro. I have been on arch/debian since 2003 and rpm distros before that back to '96 and never really tried slackware or any slack-based projects. That being said I've been able to get a solid grasp on slapt-get/src in about 5 minutes and I love the tradeoff between binary and source installations for certain packages, as well as the defaults for the installation. Can't see too many distros main-version-ing tiling WMs as their defaults!

Again, love this distro with the Ratpoison defaults, and have made it my new default. Took some chroot magic to get the broadcomm wireless drivers installed as well as adding a cookie-handling (better at it, rather) browser to use the wireless internet I have in my barracks, but most people don't support this sort of specificity, so it's no biggy.

GREAT WORK!

[ggordon]

one has to edit wpa_supplicant.conf to their individual setup and then add it to some init file to get it to load on start-up

I don't think you should have to do that. It sounds like your wireless isn't supported out of the box by Salix. I don't know too much about such issues because I've never had any problems with mine, but if you post details of your hardware, someone can probably help. Also, it's possible the information you need is in the forum already. It won't be a problem specific to the Ratpoison edition - any Salix edition should have similar behaviour, as far as I know.

Also, if you already use wicd to connect in your existing distro, it might be worth having a look at the settings there. Under Preferences, I think.

EDIT In Ratpoison, having accessed wicd from the menu, it's right-arrow to access these settings, not shift-c as I thought when I had a look at it just now - that's to Connect. Sorry if this is obvious! It's also *not* '>', at least not on my keyboard. See also

Code: Select all

man wicd-curses

Did you install Full, rather than Basic? It sounds as if you did - otherwise you have to reinvent this particular wheel.

The 'right arrow key' was the key.....thanks alot!

[mimosa]

By the way, is there any interest in a live version? At first I sort of assumed not, but now I think about it, it would have all the advantages of any other Live edition of Salix, besides coming with a useful set of tools for rescue purposes. Namely:

- portability (the trusty memory stick with persistence)
- showing it off to your friends
- try without the commitment of installing # a big plus, given the relative unfamiliarity of Ratpoison

[gapan]

I don't know. I don't think there will be many people to test a live CD. And certain things in the live CD will definitely require a mouse (like the installer), so it's against what this edition was made for.

[mimosa]

Well, I'll test it

Seriously, I get the impression the new approach to creating live CDs (in the pipeline) will make each individual edition considerably less work than before - I think Akuna posted about this recently. Anyway, I'm not sure how much use I'd be beyond testing, but I'd be glad to help.

As for needing a mouse for some things, I don't necessarily see that as a problem. The key thing to make using Ratpoison worthwhile is that one doesn't need it for most tasks. For instance, I use mplayer a lot (obviously mouseless because it's a console app) but I also have vlc installed for any media that give me trouble; and it just means a click or two to get the thing going. (Often, if mplayer won't play it, neither will Whaaw.) I also have libreoffice for working on other people's files - and then, I might as well not be using Ratpoison at all. But I have to do those tasks in some environment. If I were being purist I could dual boot with a different Salix edition, and I actually think I will set things up like that (the Openbox beta is very nice) but in practice I multitask too much to want to exclude the apps in question from my own Ratpoison installation.

I do agree it's a good principle to have no need for the mouse at all, so you could actually use it without one. But as long as the mouse was only needed occasionally (and not for a normal boot), I still think a "Ratpoison Live" would get plenty of use. Another example is Gparted, which I assume can't be used mouselessly. But how often do you use it? (In that case, there are CLI alternatives, but not for the fainthearted: not that they're so difficult, but it's a task with little space for making mistakes along the learning curve. So you could leave it to the user to install if they want.)

[jayseye]

Well, I'll test it... I do agree it's a good principle to have no need for the mouse at all, so you could actually use it without one. But as long as the mouse was only needed occasionally (and not for a normal boot), I still think a "Ratpoison Live" would get plenty of use.

+1

As a recovering, long-time Slax user, I still love Live CDs. One that can be used sans mouse would be a real boon.

[mimosa]

In case it may be useful to anyone else:

rtorrent needs a little configuration to work fully - for instance, you need to create a session/ directory for it to remember what it was doing last time.

The documentation on the official website

http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/

is rather incomplete, but a well-commented .rtorrent.rc file is available for download there.

The man page is worth a look, but it doesn't really help with the .rtorrent.rc. Unofficial suggestions can of course be found by searching.

Note that the default use of relative paths for the download and session directories is actually quite nice, as long as you run rtorrent from where the files are. I haven't tried running multiple instances of rtorrent, but the documentation cautions that if you do, each one should use its own session directory. Regardless of that, I quite like the idea of being able to just run a session wherever the data is.