Jan's Linux Log

This blog started out as an install log of RedHat 9 on a Compaq Presario 2538cl laptop (linuxpresario.blogspot.com) . However, I soon started to include little logs to myself when I made configuration changes to software, etc. So, I've moved it over to our domain, and changed its name to Linux Log. Here you will find some tips & tricks related to Linux configuration on a laptop, as well as software related things that I run into. I log here things that worked for me, of course, your mileage may vary.

Any questions/comments? E-mail me at linux_atsign_boshoff|za|net.

Software Tips

Grace EMF Export

August 29, 2003

Okay, here's the comment about automatically saving a .emf file from grace.

After installing pstoedit, and making sure that it can succesfully convert .eps to .emf, add the following line to gracerc in ~/.grace:

DEFINE OFILTER "pstoedit -f emf - %s" PATTERN "*.emf"

Then when specifying the filename with a .emf extension under the "Print Setup" menu (and selecting the eps print device) it will filter it automatically through pstoedit. Still a little tedious, but quicker than doing it all manually.

WMF/EMF from Grace

August 20, 2003

I'm interested in being able to save Grace graph files to wmf/emf. So I found a neat library, libEMF, which I think might be able to do this. Downloaded libEMF from the SourceForge site, together with the patch that is also on that site. Then also downloaded the neat package pstoedit.



  1. Applied the patch to the libEMF directory: cat libEMF-1.0.fixes-2002-09-30.diff | patch -p1
  2. ./configure;make;make install
  3. In the pstoedit directory, also do ./configure;make;make install
  4. At least now I'm able to convert eps to emf with pstoedit -f wmf file.eps file.emf which produces vector graphs for ease of use in Windows Apps.

Will comment later on how to possibly automatically include this in Grace using some kind of filter.

Intel Fortran on RH 9

July 22, 2003

Downloaded and installed the new kernel today. Recompiled according to my previous post.

Also installed Intel Fortran Compiler today. Since there is an incompatibility between ifc and the new glibc libraries used by RH9, I followed some suggestions that I found in an Intel forum. It basically comes down to

  1. Downloaded glibc-2.2.93-5.i686.rpm from the RH8.0 distribution at a Red Hat FTP mirror.
  2. Extracted the old libraries from the rpm with the commands: rpm2cpio glibc-2.2.93-5.i686.rpm | cpio -idv ./lib/i686/libc-2.2.93.so ./lib/i686/libc.so.6 ./lib/libc-2.2.93.so ./lib/libc.so.6 ./lib/libcrypt-2.2.93.so ./lib/libcrypt.so.1 rpm2cpio glibc-2.2.93-5.i686.rpm | cpio -idv ./lib/i686/libpthread-0.10.so ./lib/i686/libpthread.so.0 ./lib/libpthread-0.10.so ./lib/libpthread.so.0
  3. Copied the newly created lib directory to the Intel install directory: mkdir /usr/local/intel/old_libs; cp -r ./lib/* /usr/local/intel/old_libs/
  4. Edited /usr/local/intel/compiler70/ia32/bin/ifc.cfg to contain: -L/usr/local/intel/old_libs -lc-2.2.93