Pushbutton Linux Manual

What are the Pushbutton Linux dependencies?(top)

This is a partial list .. it will get better when we do some experiments with other Linux Distros such as Kbuntu and Fedora.

The current release (August 2010) of Pushbutton Linux on the Tailwind-live OS has this package list.

From this list it is relatively easy to come up with a short list of required debian packages.

The must have packages are required assuming you want to be able to run all the apps in the demo/default configuration menus.

If you want to support multiple users on a website, you will also need the aespipe package. More about this later.

Must Have List:(top)

apache2	Server running on port 8888 to run PBL cgi-bin perl scripts.
courier-imap	IMAP server for 'showpics' app.
cups	... or some type of printer manager for 'print que' app.
dbus-x11, dbus	Will need this for future Skype API management
exim4	Mail Transfer agent - again for 'showpics' app.
fetchmail	... to fetch mail off gmail server.
ghostscript, gv	So we can print some file formats for 'print que' app.
gnuchess	GNU Chess
icedove	an email tool - Debian's Thunderbird equivalent
icedtea6-plugin	.. a java plugin so we can support Java content.
iceweasel	a web browser - Debian's Firefox Equivalent
imagemagick	image manipulation programs (convert)
isc-dhcp-client	Debian 'Squeeze' new dhcp client package
kcheckers	KDE checkers game
kpat	KDE patience (solitare) game
openoffice	.. so we can print .doc files for 'print que' app.
perl	PERL language for cgi-bin and many other scripts.
python	Python language for Skype API and other tools
sane, xsane	scanimage command line tool for 'scan' app.
sshd, ssh	to support ssl communications - required for X11vnc (remote desktop access) and general shell access maintenance.
skype 2.1.0.47-1	for video calls - but watch what version you get as some releases don't work!
v4l	video4linux support libraries for large collection of webcams
vlc	multimedia player - used for a number of internet radio stations and for playing mp3 music on flash
wget	used by many apps. to download remote data such as email whitelist etc.
wine	Microsoft emulator - if you like to play a bridge game, you will want this.
xfce4	XFCE Lightweight Desktop Environment - you could probably use KDE or Gnome instead.
xine-plugin	xine-based media player plugin for Mozilla browsers
x11vnc	VNC server for remote access to desktop
xboard	chess board for X

Additional libraries:(top)

There are some specific libaries that Tailwind-Live has installed that you may find you need. They are listed next.

AdobeReader 9.3.2	used by the 'letter' app. to display a letter before printing	http://get.adobe.com/reader
Flashplayer 10	to play a flash stream	http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer
RealPlayer 11GOLD	Real multi-media player	http://www.real.com/realplayer/linux
samuel-0.1.8	Checkers game	http://freshmeat.net/projects/samuel
sane-1.1.0	latest sane back-end to support latest scanners	https://alioth.debian.org/projects/sane/
Skype4Py-1.0.31	Skype Python library for Skype app.	http://sourceforge.net/projects/skype4py/files/
v4l-dvb library	latest v4l library to support latest webcams (compile with module-assistant)	http://www.linuxtv.org/repo/
lpairs-1.0.4	a game of concentration (I modified it to reduce size and log user data)	http://lgames.sourceforge.net/index.php?project=LPairs
codecs	codecs for playing DVD's and other multimedia	http://www3.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/ all-20061022.tar.bz2 (don't know why I picked this version .. but I think there was a reason!

Perl Modules:(top)

Here is a short list of modules currently used in Pushbutton Linux:

CGI
URI::Escape
File::stat
File::Slurp
XML::Simple
Data::Dumper
Email::MIME
Email::Folder
Email::Simple
X11::GUITest

These modules can be checked with root-install/check-perlmodules.

They can be install with the script root-install/install-perlmodules.

The trick with installing perl modules is to export FTP_PASSIVE=1 so your firewall does not block non-passive ftp transfers! (as shown in the script)

Downloading and installing Pushbutton Linux (top)

You can browse the latest git repository here .
Select snapshot to download the latest .tgz file.
Extract the snapshot in a suitable location.
go to root-install directory and study the init* files to see what needs to be done as root user. (you will need to create some *.conf files)
run the init script (or some variation) to start the apache2 server and email tools.
in the USER account: copy, move or link the dot-pushbutton directory to $HOME/.pushbutton
as the USER (not root), go to .pushbutton/bin and study start.pushbutton.demo and then run it (or some variation) to initialize some directories.
open your browser at http://localhost:8888/cgi-bin/menu.cgi to open the menu.

You should be in business .. test out the environment!

Fine-tuning the user environment (top)

If you are simply doing some testing and development of the Pushbutton Linux code, then you might be quite happy with the environment 'as is'.

NOTE that the coding objective is to be independent of browser window size thus you should be able to resize a browser window and next 'button-click' will understand this new size and position all the buttons correctly .. or as best it can with the size restraints.

Here is a list of tips for fine-tunning:

set browser to NOT display tool bars and status bar
set browser to maximize as default when first started.

An alternative to this is to call http://localhost:8888/index.html which will open the a new browser window and resize it to full screen size and close the calling browser window. For this to work, you need to set the 'about:config' dom.allow_scripts_to_close_windows parameter to 'true'.

You can also play with resizing to 'less than' full size so another script can oversize the window so the top window bar disappears. This is starting to get into 'hokey' territory.

Unfortunately you can not use the browser 'fullscreen' mode as any apps that you want to launch (like skype) will always get hidden behind this window. (If you try this, Alt-F11 gets you out of fullscreen mode!).
hide your Window Manager panel bar - possibly on the left screen edge so all the user sees is the browser taking up the full desktop.
set Window Manager to NOT raise window on click. This is almost the same thing as setting browser to be 'always below other windows'. Ofcourse if you can figure out how to tell your Window Manager to default your browser to 'always below other windows' then this would be a better solution - but in XFCE4 you can only do this with mouse actions!

Why? The reason you want to keep the browser below other windows is so that if skype or some other application is launched by Pushbutton Linux, the new application will never get burried below the user menu (browser window).

Change width of USER's scrollbars by creating file $HOME/.gtkrc-2.0 ... useful if you have touchscreen :

style "wide-scrollbars"
{
    GtkRange       ::slider_width      = 40
    GtkRange       ::stepper_size      = 40
}
class "GtkRange"  style "wide-scrollbars"

create a 'machine' configuration directory with audio defaults in the cgi-bin dir.
- open your mixer and set up default settings you want to save
- modify bin/get_hardware.pl to identify your machine uniquely (creates /tmp/pbl/machine.conf)
- create cgi-bin/$MACHINE directory and save audio mixer default settings:
```
 amixer -c 0 contents > cgi-bin/$MACHINE/amixer-skype.config
```
install touchscreen driver evtouch: (assuming this driver will work on your touchscreen!)

install xserver-xorg-input-evtouch (dpkg -i xserver-xorg-input-evtouch_0.8.8-1_i386.deb works if you can find it!)
copy root-install/50-ideaco.fdi to /etc/hal/fdi/policy/ and /etc/init.d/hal restart and re-enter Window Manager
adjust input.x11_options.minx/maxx/miny/maxy parameters in 50-ideaco.fdi to calibrate touch screen (or find a utility to do this!)


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