GNOME User's Guide
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# Utilities

The Utilities category of `gnome-utils` package is a grab-bag of miscellaneous applications to help you get your work done. To launch any of these applications, click on the Main Menu and select the Utilities menu item.

## GNOME Font Selector

`GNOME Font selector` is a simple utility for choosing a screen (i.e. X Window System) font.

`GNOME Font selector` is usually launched when you are changing an application's font in a Settings or Preferences dialog. It can also be launched from the main menu by selecting Font Selector item in the Utilities submenu of the Main Menu, or from the command line by running command gfontsel.

It is important to know that in X Window System, each font has a number of attributes, such as family (Helvetica, Times, Courier…), size, weight, slant, etc., and two fonts are considered different even if they only differ in one of the properties, such as size or weight: `Helvetica 10 point`, `Helvetica 12 point`, and `Helvetica 10 point bold` are considered as different fonts. Each font has a unique name (officially known as X Logical Font Description, or XLFD), which includes the values of all font's attributes, and by necessity is very long. Detailed description of X Window System fonts, their attributes and names can be found in the section called Font attributes in X Window System and XLFD.

### Main window

This window (labelled `Font`) is the main window used for choosing the font. It is shown in Figure 13.

Figure 13. GNOME Font Selector

### Font Selector Basic usage

To choose a font, select the font family (for example, `courier`) in the left column, then select font style—that is, weight and slant (for example, `bold italic`), and finally, font size.

The `Preview` window will show you how the selected font looks like. By default, it shows the Latin alphabet; you can also type any text you like in this window, and it will be shown using the selected font.

To find more information about the selected font, you can switch to the `Font information` window.

If the font selector utility was launched by some application, such as one of the preferences dialogs, you will have buttons OK and Cancel at the bottom of the window. After you are satisfied with the chosen font, you can press OK and the name of the selected font will be returned to the launching application.

If the font selector utility was started from the menu or from the command line, it will have buttons Apply and Close. Pressing Apply button will copy the full name (XLFD) of the selected font to the clipboard, so that it can be pasted into any other area of the screen by pressing the middle mouse button. Pressing Apply button also shows the name of the selected font in the `Selection` field at the top of the screen.

### Finer points

If there are several fonts with the same family name, the font foundry (usually the vendor name) will also be shown in the left field, for example: `courier(adobe)`, `courier(bitstream)`.

`Font Style` field shows more than just font weight and slant. Namely, it also shows font's spacing, which can be monospaced (`[M]`), character-cell (`[C]`), or proportional (no label). In monospaced and character-cell fonts, each character has the same width; in proportional fonts, the character width varies, which usually looks better.

| Warning
| Unfortunately, terminal emulation programs (including `xterm` and `gnome-terminal`) and many programs initially designed to work in a terminal (such as `emacs` editor) can only properly display monospaced and character cell fonts; don't use proportional fonts for these cases because proportional fonts will not appeal to most eyes.

Finally, `Font Style` field also shows all possible character sets available for given font (if there is more than one). Roughly speaking, character set describes symbols of what alphabet are shown in this font. The most common charset is `iso8859-1`, which includes all Latin letters, punctuation marks, numbers and enough accented letters to cover majority of Western European languages. More information is given in the section called Font attributes in X Window System and XLFD.

You will also notice that in the `Size` field, some font sizes are marked with stars. These are the sizes of unscaled bitmap fonts; they usually look better than other type (scalable and scaled bitmap) fonts — see the section called Font Selector Filter window.

You can configure the font selector dialog to show only those fonts which meet certain criteria. This is done in the `Filter` window. If you later decide that you again want to see all the fonts, just press the button Reset Filter either in the main window or in the filter window.

### Font Selector Font Information window

This window shows the information about selected font, both the values you requested and actual values. This is useful if you want to check the values of some of the font's parameters which you cannot specify in the main window, such as screen resolution. This window also shows the full font name (XLFD), which contains the same information.

### Font Selector Filter window

In this window, you can set the font selector to show only the fonts which satisfy some criteria. You can specify values for font foundry (vendor), weight, character set, slant, set width, and spacing (see the section called Font attributes in X Window System and XLFD for description of these and other font parameters). You can choose *, which means "any value"; you can also specify several values for the same field: just click on several of the them with the left mouse button (you do not need to hold SHIFT or CTRL).

Figure 14. `Font Selector` filter window

You can also specify allowed font types, using checkbuttons at the top of this window. Possible types are bitmap fonts, scalable fonts, and scaled bitmaps. The most common fonts are bitmap fonts; scalable fonts (TrueType and Type 1 PostScript) usually produce equally good quality, but not all implementations of X Window System are able to use them.

As the name shows, scalable fonts can be scaled to any size without loss of quality. While it is possible to scale bitmap fonts as well, the quality of scaled bitmap fonts is disastrous. For this reason, by default font selector does not show scaled bitmap fonts.

After you have set your filter, you can return to the main window (do not press OK or Apply — just choose the tab `Font`), which will now only show the fonts satisfying your criteria. To remind you about this, the main window will now show words `Filter applied`.

To return to the default filter (i.e., show all possible fonts except for scaled bitmaps), press Reset Filter either in the Filter window or in the main window.

### Font attributes in X Window System and XLFD

As was said earlier, each font in X Window system has a number of attributes and a full name, also known as X Logical Font Description (XLFD), which lists all of these attributes and therefore is quite long. Typical font name looks like this

    	  -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-m-70-iso8859-1

This name consists of 14 fields, showing the values of 14 parameters of the font, separated by dashes.

While such a name gives a complete information about the font, it is somewhat overwhelming, especially since not all of this parameters are actually useful. To make life a little bit easier, you can use wildcard * in the font name; for example, the previous font can also be referred to as

    	  -adobe-courier-medium-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

As usual, * matches any value; if there are several fonts matching the given name, the system will pick the first matching one. In this particular example, most probably there is only one font matching this name, so this name is unambiguous.

Below we list those of the font's 14 attributes which are actually useful:

- `foundry` — font foundry, the company or individual which made the font (in our example, `adobe`)

- `family` — font family, the popular nickname of the font (in our example, `courier`)

- `weight` — font weight (in our example, `medium`). Admissible values: bold, medium, etc.

- `slant` — font slant (in our example, `(r)oman`, i.e. unslanted). Admissible values: (i)talics, (o)blique, (r)roman, etc.

- `pixelsize` — the number of pixels vertically in a character (in our example, 12)

- `pointsize` — approximate point size of the font, measured in tenths of a point. In the example above, point size is 120, that is, 12 points. One point is equal to 1/72 of an inch, which is the common convention in English and American typesetting.

- horizontal and vertical `resolutions` in dots per inch — in the example above, both are 75 dpi.

  Note that point size, pixel size, and vertical resolution are related: for fonts with resolution 75dpi, point size is approximately equal to (pixel size)*10; for fonts with resolution 100dpi, point size is approximately equal to (pixel size)*7.

- `spacing` — describes variance of character sizes in the font. Allowed values are (m)onospaced, (c)haracter cell (in both of these spacings, all characters have the same width) and proportional (characters have varying sizes). Proportional fonts usually look nicer.

- character set `registry` and `encoding` — these two parameters, commonly referred to as `character set`, or `charset` for short, describe what set of symbols (or what alphabet) this font represents. There is a number of possible charsets. Some of the most popular ones include:

  - iso8859-1, also known as Latin 1 — this character set includes all the symbols found on the keyboard, i.e. Latin letters, punctuation marks, numbers, symbols such as @ or $. It also includes some special symbols, such as the copyright sign, and a number of accented letters, thus covering the needs of most Western European languages (to be precise, Afrikaans, Basque, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Faeroese, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Scottish, Spanish, and Swedish).

  - iso8859-7 — includes Latin and Greek alphabets

  - iso8859-8 — includes Latin and Hebrew alphabets

  - koi8-r — includes Latin and Cyrillic alphabets

  - big5.eten.3.10-1 — Chinese (Big5 encoding)

  - gb2312.1980-0 — Chinese (GB encoding)

  - jisx0208.1983-0 — Japanese

The remaining font attributes (`Set Width`, `Additional Style`, and `Average Width`) are rarely used and therefore we skip their description.

Full XLFD specifications are included in technical documentation for the X Window system and can be found online at ftp://ftp.x.org/pub/R6.4/xc/doc/hardcopy/XLFD; most probably, you will never need it.

## Simple Calculator

`Gcalc` is a full-featured calculator.

Figure 15. Calculator

`Calculator` can be started by selecting Simple Calculator from the Utilities submenu of the Main Menu, or by running the command gcalc on the command line.

## GNOME Color Browser Introduction

`GNOME Color Browser` is a utility for selecting screen (i.e., X window system) color. X window system comes with many pre-defined colors, from Alice Blue to Pale Goldenrod to Yellow Green. `GNOME Color Browser` lets you browse these colors and select one of them to use by an application. It also allows you define your own collection of favorite colors, or find a pre-defined color most closely matching a given one.

To run `GNOME Color Browser` select Color Browser from the Utilities submenu of the Main Menu, or type gcolorsel on the command line.

### GNOME Color Browser Usage

`Gnome Color Browser` is used for selecting a screen color to be used by an application. Unlike the default color selector used by GNOME applications, the primary goal of `Gnome Color Browser` is to let you choose one of a list of already defined colors, hence the name "color browser". It allows you to browse the list of all pre-defined system colors (see the section called GNOME Color Selector Simple browsing), or define your own "favorite" colors (see the section called GNOME Color Selector Favorites). It can also show you those colors from these lists which most closely match a given one (see the section called GNOME Color Selector Search).

Once you have found a color you like, there are two ways you can use this color in an application. The easiest way is to utilize drag and drop: all the color bars you see in the `Gnome Color Browser` window can be drag-and-dropped onto any GNOME component which has configurable colors. For example, you can drag a color onto GNOME Panel to change Panel's background color, or onto GNOME Terminal to change its background.

You can also use the color with many X window applications which are not GNOME-compliant, for example with `emacs` text editor. Most of X applications accept command line options -bg `COLOR` and -fg `COLOR` to specify the background and foreground color. `COLOR` can be either color name, as shown by `Gnome Color Browser` or its description by a triple of numbers, Red, Green, and Blue (RGB). For example, the command

    emacs -bg lightblue -fg darkgreen

will start `emacs` with light blue background and dark green foreground. Note that contrary to common UNIX conventions, color names are case-insensitive. More information about colors in X window system, color depth, RGB values, is given in the section called Colors in X Window System.

Note that `Gnome Color Browser` only allows you to select one of the colors known to it (system colors or favorites); you cannot use it to "create" new colors. For example, it does not allow you to select a color by entering its Red, Green and Blue (RGB) values. However, it does give you a list of known colors most closely matching given RGB values (see the section called GNOME Color Selector Search for details).

### GNOME Color Selector Menus

The menu bar, located at the top of the `Gnome Color Browser` window, contains the following menus:

File

  This menu contains only one command, Quit (Ctrl-Q).

Settings

  This menu contains commands for changing various settings and preferences of `Gnome Color Browser`:

  - Format — this option allows you to change the format used by `Gnome Color Browser` for showing Red, Green and Blue (RGB) values for each color (see details in the section called Colors in X Window System). Unless you know what you are doing, it is best to use the default format (8-bit decimal).

  - Search update —this command is described in the section called GNOME Color Selector Search.

  - Search in —this command is described in the section called GNOME Color Selector Search.

  - On drop —this command allows you to choose the default action to perform when you drop into `Gnome Color Browser` window a color from some different source, such as the default GNOME color selector. Possible options are `Search it`, i.e. automatically switch to `Search` window and show the best matches to the dropped color among the system colors and favorites, or `Add to favorites`, i.e. add the dropped color to your list of favorites.

Help

  This menu contains:

  - Manual — shows this manual.

  - About — shows basic information about `Gnome Color Browser`, such as the author's name and the application version number.

### GNOME Color Selector Toolbar

The toolbar contains three buttons: Exit, which exits the program, About, which shows basic information about `Gnome Color Browser`, such as the author's name and the application version number, and Grab, which is used to grab a color of a point anywhere on the screen; its use is described in the section called GNOME Color Selector Search.

### GNOME Color Selector Simple browsing

This window, labelled `Simple`, shows you all pre-defined named system colors, as shown in Figure 16. For each color, it shows a small sample, Red, Green and Blue (RGB) values, and color name. These colors cannot be changed by the user (for advanced users, we note that these colors are defined in a special configuration file, `rgb.txt`, located in X11 library directory, usually `/usr/lib/X11R6/lib/X11`).

Figure 16. `GNOME Color Selector` Main Window

As was mentioned before, you can drag any of the color rectangles to GNOME Panel, GNOME Terminal, and many other GNOME applications windows to change their background colors.

By default, the colors are listed alphabetically by name, which is indicated by a small downward triangle next to the label `Name`. As with all GNOME applications, you can reverse the order by clicking on the word `Name` once. You can also have the list ordered by the RGB values, by clicking on `Value`, though it seems to be of little use.

You can change the default width of `Color`, `Search` and `Name` fields by dragging the separator between these fields with the left mouse button.

### GNOME Color Selector Search

This window, labelled `Search`, is used to find a system color most closely matching a given one. You can specify a color to match in several ways: by explicitly giving the RGB values using the sliders, by dragging and dropping a color from some other color source, such as default GNOME color selector (if you have selected the option On drop->Search in Settings menu), or by grabbing a color of any pixel on the screen. To use this last method, click on Grab button in the toolbar. Your mouse cursor will turn into a "crosshair". Place this crosshair over any point of the screen and click. `Gnome Color Browser` will analyze the color of this point, determine the RGB values, and show this color and the RGB values in the `Search` window. It will also show all system colors closely matching this one.

Figure 17. GNOME Color Selector Search Window

`Gnome Color Browser` shows only those colors which match the given one "close enough", and orders them by how close they are, so that the best matches are shown first. You can adjust its tolerance by using the `Tolerance` slider: smaller values make `Gnome Color Browser` to be more selective, so that only very close matches are shown. Setting the tolerance value to 0 will show only exact matches; setting tolerance to 100 will show all the colors.

By default, `Gnome Color Browser` only looks for matches among the system ("simple") colors. This can be changed using Search in... item in the Settings menu, which allows you to enable or disable searches in "simple"(system) and "favorites" (personal) colors independently.

Another configurable option is the update mode. By default, `Gnome Color Browser` continuously updates matches when you change the color (for example, by using the RGB sliders) —. If you find that this is slow on your system, you can use Settings->Search update to change the update mode to `Discontinuous` (`Gnome Color Browser` will only update matches after you released the slider) or `Delayed` ((`Gnome Color Browser` will update matches with a delay of about 1/2 second).

### GNOME Color Selector Favorites

In addition to system colors, which are defined in a system-wide configuration file and are shown in Simple browsing window, `Gnome Color Browser` also allows you to define your personal favorite colors. You can browse these colors in `Favorites` window, shown in Figure 18. You can use these colors in the same way as system-wide colors, by dragging them to a GNOME application such as GNOME Panel or GNOME Terminal to change background color.

Figure 18. `GNOME Color Selector` Favorites Window

You can add a color to the list of favorites in several ways. First, you can click with the right mouse button on any of the system colors in `Simple` or `Search` windows and select Add to favorites from the pop-up menu. Second,you can use drag and drop: if you have selected the option On drop->Add to favorites in Settings menu, then dragging a color from a GNOME color source, such as the default GNOME color selector onto the `Gnome Color Browser` window automatically adds this color to the list of favorites. Finally, you can also explicitly specify the RGB values for a color in the `Search` window, then right-click on the rectangle showing this color (to the right of RGB sliders) and select Add to favorites from the pop-up menu. In the same way, you can also add a color which you grabbed from the screen using Grab button in the toolbar.

Right-clicking on any color in the `Favorites` window produces a pop-up menu, which allows you to rename or remove a color.

### Colors in X Window System

In X Window system, each color is described by 3 numbers, namely the contents of Red, Green and Blue (as is well known, every color can be obtained by combining these three primary colors). These 3 values are commonly called the RGB values. Usually each of them is allowed to range from 0 to 255; for example, triple (0,0,0) is black, (255,0,0) is pure red, and (255, 255, 255) is white.

The total number of possible colors is thus 256×256×256=224=16,777,216. Of course, whether or not your system is actually able to show that many different colors depends on the configuration of X Window system, which is limited by the capabilities of your video card. Most modern video cards are capable of showing all these colors; some older cards will only be able to use 216=64,536 (colordepth 16) or even 28=256 (colordepth 8) colors. In this case, X Window System will still use triples like (234, 112, 243) for describing RGB values, but some of these triples will produce identical colors. More information about colors can be found in the manual page for X.

## Text File Viewer

`Gless` is a program for viewing, but not modifying, text files. It is similar to the GNU program `less`.

Figure 19. Text File Viewer

`Text File Viewer` can be started by selecting Text File Viewer from the Utilities submenu of the Main Menu, or by running the command gless on the command line.

### Menus

The menu bar, located at the top of the Main Window, provides the following commands:

File

  This menu contains commands New Window (Alt-N), Open (Alt-O, F3), Save As (Ctrl-A), Close (Alt-W) and Quit (Alt-Q) all of which are self-explanatory.

Edit

  This menu contains Find (Alt-F, F6), which opens up a dialog box allowing you to enter a word to be searched for, and Find Again (Alt-A, Shift-F6), which searches for the next occurrence of the same word.

Settings

  This menu contains only one command, Fixed Font (Ctl-F), which toggles between a fixed font display and a proportional font display.

Help

  This menu contains commands

  - Manual — shows this manual

  - About — shows basic information about `Gless`, such as author's name and version number.

## GNOME Search Tool

`GNOME Search Tool` is a utility for searching files on your system. It can perform many types of search: by filename, by modification date, by file contents, etc.

The search tool can be started by selecting GNOME Search Tool from Utilities submenu of the Main Menu, or by running the command gsearchtool on the command line.

Note that `GNOME Search Tool` is just a front-end to the UNIX commands find, grep, and locate. These commands are extremely powerful, but not very easy for a new user. `GNOME Search Tool` provides an easy-to-use interface for most common uses of these commands. If you need to perform some type of search which is not covered by the `GNOME Search Tool`, chances are that you can do it from the command line, using find and grep with appropriate options. In this case, you should read the info pages for these commands, which can be done using the `GNOME Help Browser`.

### GNOME Search Tool Usage

`GNOME Search Tool` provides two types of search: Full find and Quick find. Full find is reliable and provides many possibilities, but can be slow. Quick find uses special technique for speeding up search; it is much faster, but can only search by filename, and is not as accurate as full find. This section describes full find mode; quick find is described in the section called GNOME Search Tool Quick find mode.

Figure 20. `GNOME Search Tool` Main search window

To start a search, you must give the GNOME Search Tool the search criteria and the directory to start in.

By default, the search starts in the current working directory; if the `GNOME Search Tool` was started from the menu, then the current working directory is your home directory. You can change the starting directory by entering any valid path in the `Start in directory` field, or by choosing a directory using the Browse... button. For example, to search through all the files in on your system, enter `/` in this field (warning: it will take a very long time).

By default, `GNOME Search Tool` also searches through all subdirectories of the given directory; you can turn this behavior off by enabling the option `Don't search subdirectories`. For finer control, you can enable the option `Don't search mounted filesystems`, which will exclude from the search subdirectories which are physically located (mounted) on drives or partitions other than the starting directory — see the section called GNOME Search Tool Search Criteria for details.

The only search criterion presented by default is the `Filename`. You can use the wildcards * (matches any sequence of symbols, including an empty one) and ? (matches any single symbol) in this field. For example, to find the files with the extension `txt`, enter `*.txt` in this field; to find all the files that start with the letter D, enter `D*` (warning: file names are case-sensitive!). You can also specify much more complicated search criteria — see the section called GNOME Search Tool Search Criteria.

After you have specified the search criteria and starting directory, press Start. This will take some time (depending on the directory size and system speed), after which you will be presented with a window containing the list of all the files matching your criteria (it may be empty), as shown in Figure 21. If the search is taking too much time, you can abort it by pressing Stop button.

Figure 21. `GNOME Search Tool` Search results window

In the search results window, you can double-click on any file to open it. It will have the same effect as double-clicking on this file in a File Manager window — that is, the file will be opened using the default action for this file type. You can also save the list of found files to disk by pressing Save button. You will be prompted for a filename to save the list to; the list will be saved in a plain text format.

### GNOME Search Tool Search Criteria

In addition to the simple filename search described above, the GNOME Search Tool allows you to specify other criteria. To do so, you should select the appropriate criteria type from the drop-down list (located to the left of the Add button), and press Add. This will add this criterion to the already existing ones. `GNOME Search Tool` will search for files meeting all of the specified criteria. For example, Figure 22 shows search for all files with extension `txt` which were modified during the last 7 days and which contain the word GNOME.

Figure 22. Sample GNOME Search Session

You can remove any of the criteria you had previously added by pressing Remove button next to it. You can also temporarily disable a criterion by unchecking the Enable check-button next to it.

Below is the list of all possible criteria types:

- Filename — search by filename. As usual, you can use the wildcards * and ? in the search. Remember also that UNIX file names are case-sensitive.

- Don't search subdirectories — if this option is selected, GNOME Search Tool will not search the files in the subdirectories of the start directory.

- File owner — search by the name of the user owning the file.

- File owner group — search by the name of the group owning the file.

- Last modification time — search for files which were modified during the last N days (to be precise, during the last N*24 hours).

- Don't search mounted filesystems — if this option is selected, `GNOME Search Tool` will only search in the subdirectories which are mounted on the same device (disk) as the starting directory. For example, if the starting directory is `/` and is mounted on `/dev/hda` (first hard drive), and it has a subdirectory `/home` which is mounted on `/dev/hdb` (second hard drive), then `/home` will not be searched. This option can be useful to exclude files on the removable media (CD-ROM, floppy) from the search.

- Empty file — this criterion matches the empty file. Mostly used by system administrators for system maintenance.

- Invalid user or group — matches files whose owner or group is not known to the system. This option can be useful when searching for files belonging to users who have been removed from the system. Mostly used by system administrators for system maintenance.

- Filenames except — matches all files except those whose filename is given. As before, you can use wildcards. For example, if you specify in this field `*~`, `GNOME Search Tool` will exclude from the search all files with names ending with tilde (~).

- Simple substring search — matches all files that contain given substring. Since this option involves reading contents of every file, it can slow down the search significantly. Note: you can't use wildcards with this option.

- Regular expression search — matches all files that contain given regular expression. Since this option involves reading contents of every file, it can slow down the search significantly.

- Extended regular expression search — matches all files that contain given extended regular expression. Since this option involves reading contents of every file, it can slow down the search significantly.

For those unfamiliar with the notion of regular expression, let us just say that this is an extremely flexible and powerful syntax for pattern matching. Unlike simple wildcard matching, it allows logical operations (and, or, not), lists of symbols to match, checking for a string in the beginning of the line, and much more. Detailed description of regular expressions and extended regular expressions can be found in the man page for `grep`. New users will probably find it too complicated to use, but for more experienced users, regular expressions can be very useful.

### GNOME Search Tool Quick find mode

This section describes quick find mode of `GNOME search tool`. To use this mode, switch to `Quick find (locate)` window, shown in Figure 23.

Figure 23. `GNOME Search Tool` Quick find window

In the quick search mode, `GNOME Search tool` does not actually search for a file on the disk — instead, it uses a special database containing the names of all the files on the system. It makes search much faster. However, it also means that the only type of search you can do is by filename. Moreover, this search will not find files which were added after the last database update (on most systems, it is updated daily, usually at night — see below for more info).

To find a file using the quick search mode, just enter a substring of the file name in the `Locate file` field. For example, to find all the files whose filenames contain the string "searchtool", enter `searchtool` in this field. This will also show all the files that contain the string "searchtool" in their full pathname — in particular, all the files in `/usr/share/help/gsearchtool`.

To restrict search to a subdirectory, you can use the directory name in combination with the wildcards. For example, to do quick search for all files with extension `txt` in the directory `/home/user`, enter `/home/user/*.txt` in the `Locate file` field.

The quick search mode is actually a front-end to locate command, so if you need more detailed information, read the appropriate manual page.

### The locate database

This section discusses updating the database used for quick search. Unless you are a system administrator or just curious, you do not need to read it.

On most systems, the database used for locate command (and thus, for quick search mode of `GNOME Search tool`), is updated daily, usually at nights. This is done as a cron job — see the manual page for cron if you are unfamiliar with this utility. Note that if your computer is usually turned off at night time, the database doesn't get updated. In this case, you should change the default update time by either manually editing `/etc/crontab` or using a graphical tool such as `cromagnon`. This requires system administrator (root) privileges.

You can also issue the command "Update database now" by running the command updatedb. Again, this requires system administrator (root) privileges. Without any options, it rebuilds the whole database, for all the files on your system. It also has many command line options allowing you to fine-tune it (for example, instructing it to skip certain directories). For more information, read the manual page for updatedb.

## GNOME Stripchart

The GNOME `gstripchart` program charts various user-specified parameters as a function of time. Its main use is to chart system performance parameters such as CPU load, CPU utilization, network traffic levels, and the like. Other more ingenious uses are left as an exercise for the interested user.

The `gstripchart` program periodically reads data from a file, extracts a value, and displays these values in one of several formats. The default format is a graphical display similar to that of a stripchart recorder. Hence the name, `gstripchart`.

On systems such as Linux, in which system parameters are available in human-readable form in the /proc directory, the `gstripchart` program makes a dandy performance monitoring tool, similar to but more versatile than `xload`.

Instead of being limited to a few standard performance parameters, the `gstripchart` program can plot any time-variant parameter than can be read from a file or pipe. This ability to read data from a pipe provides a very versatile and easy to use method of setting up custom displays.

The `gstripchart` program can be started by selecting Stripchart Plotter item from the Utilities submenu of the Main Menu, or by running the command gstripchart on the command line.

### Using gstripchart

Although the `gstripchart` program can be used to plot very nearly any parameter that is of interest, the default configuration will produce a useful overview of the performance parameters of the system that it's being run on. This section describes basic usage of the `gstripchart` program in its default configuration. A description of how to customize the parameters that are plotted is provided later in this document.

### Gstripchart Basic usage

When you first start `gstripchart`, you see the main window, as shown in Figure 24.

Figure 24. Stripchart Plotter Main Window

In its default configuration, the `gstripchart` creates a 200 by 50 pixel window that contains two main elements — a scrolling "strip" on the left, and a series of "pens" on the right. When using the default configuration, there will be a "pen" and a "strip" line showing the current and recently past values of system's CPU utilization in blue, the one minute load average in yellow, the percentage of swap space in use in white, and the inbound and outbound network traffic volumes in red and green, respectively. If a PPP interface is currently active, a green indicator light will be displayed in the upper left corner of the main window.

Clicking on the `gstripchart` main window with mouse button one will pop up a numeric value window. The numeric value window corresponding to the main window shown in Figure 24 is shown below in Figure 25.

Figure 25. Stripchart Parameter Numeric Value Window

This window provides a multi-line, text-based display of the name, current value, and full-scale value of each of the parameters being plotted. It can be dismissed either by clicking on the close button in the title bar of the numeric value window, or by a second mouse click in the main window.

Clicking on the `gstripchart` main window with mouse button three will pop up an Application menu containing Help, About, Params, and Exit menu items. The Help and About menu items display this help information and the usual about box, respectively, and the Exit menu item terminates the execution of the `stripchart` program. The Params displays a window containing a notebook with a page describing the details of each parameter, as shown in Figure 26.

Figure 26. Stripchart Parameter Window

### Stripchart Customization

The `gstripchart` program determines the parameters to display by reading a configuration file. The `gstripchart` program will look for a configuration file in the following order:

- first, for a file specified on the command line,

- then, for a file named `gstripchart.conf` in the current working directory,

- then, for a file named `.gstripchart.conf` in the users home directory,

- then, for a file named `/etc/gstripchart.conf`,

- and finally, for a file named `gstripchart.conf` in the `CONFDIR` directory, which will usually be either `/usr/share/gstripchart/` or `/usr/local/share/gstripchart/`.

If no configuration file is found, the program displays an error message and exits.

### Stripchart Options

There are a few command line switches that can be used to alter the behavior of the program. In addition to the common help, usage, version, Gnome, Gtk, and Session management options, the following gstripchart-specific options are available:

––geometry `GEOMETRY-SPEC`

  A standard X11 geometry specification of the form `WxH±X±Y`.

––config-file `FILENAME`

  Specifies a file from which to read configuration information, overriding the normal configuration file search order.

––chart-interval `UPDATE-INTERVAL`, ––slider-interval `UPDATE-INTERVAL`

  Specifies the time interval in seconds between updates to the chart window and slider window. If unspecified, the chart window will be updated every 5 seconds and the slider window will be updated every 0.2 seconds.

––chart-filter `TIME-CONSTANT`, ––slider-filter `TIME-CONSTANT`

  Specifies the time constant in seconds to be used in low-pass filtering the data displayed in the chart or slider windows. A time constant of 0 seconds turns low-pass filtering off, which can result in a jumpy display. A time constant in the same range as the interval parameter, described above, is usually a good choice. Much larger values cause display updates to become sluggish. If unspecified, no low pass filtering is performed in either window.

––menubar

  Adds an application menu bar to the main window. Normally this is omitted, and the menu is popped up by right-clicking on the chart window.

––omit-slider

  Causes the display of the slider window to be suppressed.

––display-type `TYPE`

  `TYPE` specifies the type of display to be generated. The `TYPE` specifier can be one of:

  - gtk — use the default gtk-based graphic display;

  - applet — run as an applet in the Gnome panel.

### Stripchart Configuration File

The behavior of the `gstripchart` program is determined by the contents of the configuration file that it reads at startup. This file is located as described in the section called Stripchart Customization>

This configuration file contains a series of optional application-wide configuration options described in the section called Application-Wide Configuration Options>, followed by a series of parameter configuration options described in the section called Parameter Configuration Options>, one for each parameter to be plotted. Each of these configuration file lines is comprised of RFC-822 style "keyword: value" pairs. A comment can be included anywhere within the configuration file by putting a sharp sign (#) in the first column of each comment line, and blank lines can be used wherever they will improve readability.

Here's an example of the initial portion of a `gstripchart` configuration file. It begins (as all files should) with a comment describing the purpose of the file. The comment is followed by three application-wide configuration options. The first sets the chart interval to 5.000, so that the "strip" portion of the display is updated every 5 seconds. Next, the minor tick interval is set to 12 chart update periods, producing a minor tick mark on the display at one-minute intervals. Finally, the major tick interval is set to 5 minor tick periods, producing a major tick mark on the display at five-minute intervals.

    #
    # gstripchart.conf --
    #   an example configuration file
    #   for the GNOME stripchart program.
    #

    chart-interval:		5.000

    minor_ticks:		12
    major_ticks:		5

The following application-wide configuration option keywords are available. Some are optional; some are only used by certain display types; many have reasonable default values, as described below.

#### Application-Wide Configuration Options

The first group of keywords provide the same functions as the command line switches described in the previous section. The options in this group must be placed at the beginning of the configuration file, prior to the parameter definition section. If a value is supplied for any of these parameters both in the configuration file and on the command line, the command line value takes precedence.

chart-interval: `UPDATE-INTERVAL`, slider-interval: `UPDATE-INTERVAL`

  Specifies the time interval in seconds between updates to the chart window and slider window as described previously under the section called Stripchart Options>.

chart-filter: `TIME-CONSTANT`, slider-filter: `TIME-CONSTANT`

  Specifies the time constant in seconds to be used in low-pass filtering the data displayed in the chart or slider windows as described previously under the section called Stripchart Options>.

menu: `YES-OR-NO`

  Adds or omits an application menu bar to the main window.

slider: `YES-OR-NO`

  Adds or omits the "pen" display to the main window.

minor_ticks: `INTERVAL-COUNT`

  Sets the number of pixels (update intervals) between minor tick marks on the gtk and applet displays.

major_ticks: `INTERVAL-COUNT`

  Sets the number of pixels (update intervals) between major tick marks on the gtk and applet displays.

#### Parameter Configuration Options

The second portion of the `gstripchart` configuration file contains a series of parameter description groups, one group for each parameter to be plotted. Each parameter group is made up of a "begin" and "end" pair of lines enclosing the remaining parameter definition lines. In addition to the "begin" and "end" statements, each parameter group must contain an equation statement, which determines the value to be displayed, and either a "color" or a "lights" statement, which determines the display format for the parameter.

For example, a very minimal parameter definition would be the following system load average parameter.

    # Load -- display the system one minute load average

    begin:		Load
      color:	yellow
      equation:	$load_1m
    end:		Load

The following keywords are available to be used to define the way that a parameter is displayed.

begin: `[ PARAMETER-NAME ]`, identifier: `[ PARAMETER-NAME ]`

  Introduces a parameter definition, and assigns a name to the parameter. This line must be the first line of a parameter description. The "begin" and "identifier" keywords are synonymous. The `PARAMETER-NAME` is optional, but if supplied must match the `PARAMETER-NAME` used in the corresponding "end" statement.

end: `[ PARAMETER-NAME ]`

  Closes a parameter block introduced by the "begin" or "identifier" keyword. The `PARAMETER-NAME` must match any `PARAMETER-NAME` supplied in the corresponding "begin" statement.

equation: `STRING`

  An equation used to obtain the value to be plotted for this parameter.

  A value is obtained by evaluating the "equation" line using these field values. The first (or only) value is denoted by $1, the next by $2, and so forth. The difference between the field values between the last and the current iteration is denoted by ~1, ~2, and so forth. The elapsed time in seconds between the last and current iteration is ~t. The requested update interval is $i, and the delta (which will always be zero) is ~i.

  The usual infix arithmetic operators — addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (*), division (/), and remaindering (%) — are available, along with parenthesis for grouping subexpressions.

color: `COLOR-NAME`

  Determines the color to be used in displaying a parameter. The color names and their RGB values are taken from X11/rgb.txt.

filename: `FILENAME`

  The file from which a parameter value is read. When a filename beginning with a "|" is supplied, input lines will be read from a pipe.

  On each iteration, a value to be displayed is obtained for each parameter in the configuration file. The file named in the "filename" line is opened -- either as a pipe if the filename begins with a pipe character ( | ), or as a regular file otherwise -- and a line is read.

  If a pattern was specified, lines are read until one is found that contains the pattern string anywhere in the line. This line is split into a series of whitespace separated fields, each of which is interpreted as a floating point number.

lights: `COLOR-NAME [, COLOR-NAME...]`

  If a parameter block contains a "lights:" line instead of a "color:" line, the parameter will not be plotted. Rather, a small square in one of the supplied colors is displayed near the upper-left corner of the display. The color used is based on the value of the parameter. A value of less that 0.5 leaves the light in the background color; a value between 0.5 and 1.5 displays a light in the first color; a value between 1.5 and 2.5 displays a light in the second color; and so forth for as many colors were supplied on the "lights:" line.

pattern: `STRING`

  The pattern which identifies the line from which a parameter value is to be extracted. If no pattern is provided, the first line of the file is used.

scale: `LOG-OR-LINEAR`

  Specifies whether a logarithmic or linear scale factor is to be used when plotting a parameter value.

maximum: `NUMBER`

  The largest value that can be displayed. Any value in excess of the maximum will be plotted at the top of the display. If omitted, a default value of 1.0 is used.

minimum: `NUMBER`

  The smallest value that can be displayed. Any value less than the minimum will be plotted at the bottom of the display. If omitted, a default value of 0.0 is used.

active: `YES-OR-NO`

  If a parameter is marked "active: no", it will not be displayed. This provides a convenient way to disable a parameter without deleting it from a parameter file.

#### Stripchart libgtop Values

Normally, the `gstripchart` program will be built with the libgtop library linked in. The libgtop library provides a portable and well-standardized method of accessing common system performance parameters. This is the preferred method of obtaining a value to be plotted.

The following libgtop parameters are available:

- CPU Statistics — cpu_total, cpu_user, cpu_nice, cpu_sys, cpu_idle, and cpu_freq

- Memory Statistics — mem_total, mem_used, mem_free, mem_shared, mem_buffer, mem_cached, mem_user, mem_locked

- Swap Statistics — swap_total, swap_used, swap_free, swap_pagein, swap_pageout

- Uptime Statistics — uptime, idletime

- Loadavg Statistics — load_running, load_tasks, load_1m, load_5m, load_15m

- Network Statistics — net_pkts_in, net_pkts_out, net_pkts_total, net_bytes_in, net_bytes_out, net_bytes_total, net_errs_in, net_errs_out, net_errs_total

  Note that the network statistic values don't use the libgtop library. Instead, they are read directly from /proc/net/dev, and so are only available under Linux.

These are all signed long integer quantities, except for uptime, idletime, and the five load values which are floating point values.

## Gfloppy

`GFloppy` is a simple floppy formatter for Linux. You may need to format your floppies when they are new.

To run `GFloppy`, select gfloppy from the Utilities submenu of the Main Menu, right click on the floppy icon on your desktop and select Format Floppy, or type gfloppy on the command line.

### Using GFloppy

Starting `GFloppy` opens the Main window, shown in Figure 27.

Figure 27. `GFloppy` Main Window

Don't forget to insert a non-write-protected floppy.

| WARNING
| GFloppy will destroy all files on your floppy! Do not format floppies which contain files you wish to keep.

Select your file system type. If you need to use your floppy under DOS or Windows, choose DOS (FAT16). Otherwise, choose Linux Native (ext2), since it is technically superior, but cannot be read on most non-Linux machines.

GFloppy needs to know your floppy's density (the amount of data it can hold). Nowadays, most are High Density, 1.44MB 3.5" floppies.

Quick format does not check your floppy for bad "blocks", so it is considerably faster. However, if you have not formatted your floppy before, or suspect it might be bad, you are better off with a regular, slow format.

Now, click Format to start formatting your floppy, as shown in the following figures.

Figure 28. Formatting...

Figure 29. Verifying...

Unless you selected Quick Format, GFloppy will check for bad "blocks" on your floppy. If it finds any, your floppy is getting worn out and should be replaced.

Figure 30. Checking for bad blocks...

If all went well, GFloppy will let you know it was successful (Figure 31), and ask you if you want to format another. If you click Yes, GFloppy will place you back at the main screen, otherwise it will quit.

Figure 31. Success!

Figure 32. Format another?

### GFloppy Troubleshooting

If you forget to insert a floppy for a slow format, GFloppy will show Figure 33.

Figure 33. No floppy disk

If GFloppy displays Figure 34 under a slow format, your floppy is write protected. To un-write protect your floppy, eject it, and turn it over. Standard 3.5" floppies will have a small black tab in the upper-left corner - slide it down so it covers the hole. If your 3.5" floppy does not have a black tab, it is permanently write protected, and you should get another floppy.

Figure 34. Write protected

When performing a quick format, GFloppy will show you Figure 35 if you forgot to insert a floppy, or if it is write protected.

Figure 35. Quick Format - no floppy or write protected

If you can't choose to format DOS floppies, as shown in Figure 36, you need to install `mtools`.

| TIP
| On an RPM based system, such as Red Hat, you can install `mtools` using `GnoRPM`, from the System of the Main Menu.

Figure 36. Cannot format DOS floppies

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