To VNC to your Linux desktop from a remote PC:

1) On the PC, configure and save a PuTTY session with a tunnel from port 5903 on the local host to port 5903 on the remote (Linux) machine.

2) Use this PuTTY session to connect to the Linux machine.

3) Log in as root.

4) If you haven't already done so, change the desktop VNC uses from the default twm to either Gnome or KDE by editing your xstartup file:

a) vi ~/.vnc/xstartup

b) For KDE, replace "twm &" with "startkde &".
For Gnome, replace "twm &" with "exec gnome-session &".

c) Enter vncserver :3
This launches the VNC server and tells it to use display 3.
(The first time you do this you'll be asked to supply a password.)

5) On the PC, start you VNC client (e.g. TightVNC - Fast Compression).

6) VNC to localhost::5903

7) Enter the password you supplied to vncserver.

You're in.

8) When you're finished, turn off vncserver (for security) by entering:

vncserver -kill :3

After installing FC5 yesterday I couldn't get the httpd (Apache) service to start.

The problem appears to be with the httpd.conf file (/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf). This file contains a large set of LoadModule commands. Seems like these are wrong by default.

To correct this, back up the existing file and replace these commands with the following:

LoadModule auth_basic_module modules/mod_auth_basic.so
LoadModule auth_digest_module modules/mod_auth_digest.so
LoadModule authn_file_module modules/mod_authn_file.so
LoadModule authn_alias_module modules/mod_authn_alias.so
LoadModule authn_anon_module modules/mod_authn_anon.so
LoadModule authn_dbm_module modules/mod_authn_dbm.so
LoadModule authn_default_module modules/mod_authn_default.so
LoadModule authz_host_module modules/mod_authz_host.so
LoadModule authz_user_module modules/mod_authz_user.so
LoadModule authz_owner_module modules/mod_authz_owner.so
LoadModule authz_groupfile_module modules/mod_authz_groupfile.so
LoadModule authz_dbm_module modules/mod_authz_dbm.so
LoadModule authz_default_module modules/mod_authz_default.so
LoadModule ldap_module modules/mod_ldap.so
LoadModule authnz_ldap_module modules/mod_authnz_ldap.so
LoadModule include_module modules/mod_include.so
LoadModule log_config_module modules/mod_log_config.so
LoadModule logio_module modules/mod_logio.so
LoadModule env_module modules/mod_env.so
LoadModule ext_filter_module modules/mod_ext_filter.so
LoadModule mime_magic_module modules/mod_mime_magic.so
LoadModule expires_module modules/mod_expires.so
LoadModule deflate_module modules/mod_deflate.so
LoadModule headers_module modules/mod_headers.so
LoadModule usertrack_module modules/mod_usertrack.so
LoadModule setenvif_module modules/mod_setenvif.so
LoadModule mime_module modules/mod_mime.so
LoadModule dav_module modules/mod_dav.so
LoadModule status_module modules/mod_status.so
LoadModule autoindex_module modules/mod_autoindex.so
LoadModule info_module modules/mod_info.so
LoadModule dav_fs_module modules/mod_dav_fs.so
LoadModule vhost_alias_module modules/mod_vhost_alias.so
LoadModule negotiation_module modules/mod_negotiation.so
LoadModule dir_module modules/mod_dir.so
LoadModule actions_module modules/mod_actions.so
LoadModule speling_module modules/mod_speling.so
LoadModule userdir_module modules/mod_userdir.so
LoadModule alias_module modules/mod_alias.so
LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
LoadModule proxy_module modules/mod_proxy.so
LoadModule proxy_balancer_module modules/mod_proxy_balancer.so
LoadModule proxy_ftp_module modules/mod_proxy_ftp.so
LoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so
LoadModule proxy_connect_module modules/mod_proxy_connect.so
LoadModule cache_module modules/mod_cache.so
LoadModule suexec_module modules/mod_suexec.so
LoadModule disk_cache_module modules/mod_disk_cache.so
LoadModule file_cache_module modules/mod_file_cache.so
LoadModule mem_cache_module modules/mod_mem_cache.so
LoadModule cgi_module modules/mod_cgi.so

Save the file and do a:
service httpd start

For me, at least, this solved the problem and Apache started.

However, it seems that if you adjust your Apache settings in FC5 using the GUI tool, it will rebuild the httpd.conf file using the file:
/usr/share/system-config-httpd/httpd.conf.xsl

So you also have to go to this file, back it up, then edit it in the same way you did the httpd.conf file - replacing the LoadModule list.

I'm still trying to get Tomcat working on my new Fedora Core 5 install. One thing I've found in the past with Fedora is that SELinux is enabled by default and its strictness interferes with things to the point that it can be a real pain. As a result I find it's best to turn it off to start with while you're having the usual Linux struggle to get things to work.

A clever too for adjusting your Fedora firewall and disabling SELinux is system-config-securitylevel, which you can call from the command line with just its name (because it's in /usr/bin). The clever thing I just found out about it is that even connecting remotely from a Windows laptop to your Linux machine, via a PuTTY SSH session, it will pop-up a GUI window and allow you to reconfigure the settings point-and-click style.

Tomcat's still not working though!
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I'm in the process of trying to get Tomcat running on Fedora Core 5 - which I've just finished installing. The FC5 has taken most of the day to install from the 5 CDs onto an old, slow PC with very little memory. So little memory, in fact, that it refused to install in graphical mode and when the install completed it left me at a command prompt, rather than a desktop. OK, little reminder from a collegue and I started up X, using the startx command, which launched Gnome. I then had to change the run level from 3 to 5 in the inittab file, to get this to go to the desktop next time round.

I'd forgotten how much faffing around is involved with Linux. I'm using a little 15" flat screen monitor and I changed the resolution from 800x600 to something higher, at which point the screen refused to display and I had to trawl the internet (via Windows on another machine) to find the solution, which is:

use the key combo:
Ctrl + Alt + [plus or minus key on the number pad] to cycle through screen resolutions.

Meanwhile, Tomcat is still proving troublesome to get up & running.

All this just so's I can install the trial version of Alfresco!

To sort ls output by date (or more specifically by last modification time), use the -t flag.

To reverse the sort, use the -r flag.

To restrict the output to a single column, use the -1 flag (that's a number one).

So, all together, to reverse sort the listing by date and format the list in one column, use the command:

ls -tr1