One of the simulation packages we use in my group at work has a moving target for the Linux distro/version that is required for each version of the software. The latest version 'requires' Red Hat (Enterprise or Workstation) Version 4 Update 5. I manage to get around that requirement by using CentOS and just using a RHEL /etc/redhat-release file (the contents of that file and the existance of rpm are two of the major things the install looks for, another is which packages are listed in ~root/anaconda-ks.cfg).

This was working great until earlier this week. We need to be able to record movies of the simulation to use during briefings. Previous versions of CentOS/RHEL I was able to finagle with and get xvidcap/gvidcap installed. Now, with this release I can't for some reason.

The latest version of xvidcap (1.1.7) requires the header dbus-glib-bindings.h, which Red Hat doesn't include. To try to install that requires a version of dbus that is greater than 1.1, and Red Hat only uses 0.2.2 or something. Since dbus is kind of important to the entire system, upgrading it isn't really an option (I had a spectacular failure trying this last week and ended up having to reinstall the system). The older versions of xvidcap (1.1.6 and 1.1.5) require the same header, and the old version that I managed to get working on older versions of the OS puke with all kinds of errors during compilation.

Does anybody have any suggestions on either a different distribution to try with a more modern version of dbus included (then I can dork around with trying to get the simulation installed as opposed to getting dbus upgraded), a different utility to create movies from what is appearing on the screen, or any suggestions on how to go about getting xvidcap installed by upgrading dbus?

Thanks again for all the help! This board is priceless.
Tim

Ubuntu.. way more up-to-date, and no "rpm hell" when managing packages.

But if you really like redhat, then their own "Fedora" distros are much more up-to-date than the "stable" enterprise ones.

Cheers

In looking to see which was more updated than RHEL, I saw FC10 was in release candidate. I might try that to see what version of dbus it is using (I couldn't find it on the website).

Thanks for the info!

This is a bug in xvidcap; it requires a modern dbus-1 but its configure script doesn't complain if yours is too old -- even though the rest of the code can be compiled with no dbus support at all.

It also doesn't seem to understand --without-dbus-1, but if you temporarily go and rename /usr/lib/pkgconfig/dbus-1.pc to something else, then configure and build xvidcap, you should get a dbus-less version. (That assumes, of course, you don't actually need whatever xvidcap's dbus-related functionality is -- if you do, you're in deeper trouble.)

Peter

Doing that gave me the error that it can't find Xregion.h, which lead to a whole slew of other version dependany problems.

Fun stuff!

I just tested the simulation on Fedora 9 and it works, and xvidcap is running smoothly! Thanks for the suggestions, Mark.

There is some goofiness with Fedora 9. On both laptops, it would just hang erratically. Sometimes it was just the keyboard, other times just the mouse and trackpad, and other times the whole machine would just lock up. They are both the same make/model (bought at the same time), so it might be a chipset conflict in there somewhere. My next step is to try to get it working on either of those laptops.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I think having a list of user names displayed on the login screen is a security risk. I have no idea why they went with a gdm that doesn't support removing that list of names, but most people seem concerned with being able to add whatever pic they want next to the names. That is my biggest concern with it right now, other than that I think we can transition to Fedora 9 without much of a hassle.

Thanks again!

It's stuff like that, which drives the rest of us en masse to more user-centric distros like (K)Ubuntu. Much better package management, better control over configuration options, and a generally excellent UI experience.

Cheers

I never really cared for the way Red Hat did things, starting back with the disasterous RH2 or 3 I think it was (maybe it was 5 that had the installer that was just broken - made me not stray from Slackware for a really really long time). I think I'll try Ubuntu and see if I can get that going on the laptop with the simulator.