Improving DNF Update Speeds with max_parallel_downloads

When managing a Fedora or RHEL-based system, downloading updates can sometimes be time-consuming, especially when dealing with a slow network connection or multiple large packages or sometimes too many small packages 😀. By default, the DNF package manager downloads 1/3 package at a time, which can slow down the process. However, you can significantly improve download times by tweaking the max_parallel_downloads setting.

What is max_parallel_downloads?

max_parallel_downloads is a configuration option in DNF that controls how many packages are downloaded simultaneously during system updates. By increasing the number of parallel downloads, you can take full advantage of your available network bandwidth and reduce the overall time needed for downloading updates.

Creating and using ackrc

ack is a fantastic replacement for grep and probably much more than grep. Here is what the dnf info has to say about ack

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Name         : ack
Architecture : noarch
Summary      : Grep-like text finder
URL          : http://beyondgrep.com/
License      : Artistic 2.0
Description  : Ack is designed as a replacement for grep.

And their websites says -

Designed for programmers with large heterogeneous trees of source code, ack is written in portable Perl 5 and takes advantage of the power of Perl’s regular expressions.

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mussh-run-commands-on-multiple-hosts

mussh allows you to run command/commands on multiple hosts at the same time. If you have farm of server setup with passwordless ssh or with same password (which is generally the case), then using mussh you can either check all the servers for some output or fix something or maybe update all the packages. How cool is that :)

Here is description of this package from dnf repo

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Name         : mussh
Version      : 1.0
Release      : 18.fc35
Architecture : noarch
Size         : 20 k
Source       : mussh-1.0-18.fc35.src.rpm
Repository   : fedora
Summary      : Multihost SSH wrapper
URL          : http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/mussh
License      : GPL+
Description  : Mussh is a shell script that allows you to execute a command or
             : script over ssh on multiple hosts with one command. When possible
             : mussh will use ssh-agent and RSA/DSA keys to minimize the need to
             : enter your password more than once.

Gnome with i3 on Fedora 29

I have been thinking of doing this for long time, finally I managed to get this working. Here is what you need to do to get i3 with all other gnome services running.

First we will create 2 files, this is actually all you need. In these ones, I copied the original gnome files and just change gnome-shell to i3 to replace my window manager.

11:15:43=>[]> cat /usr/share/gnome-session/sessions/gnome-i3.session
[GNOME Session]
Name=GNOME + i3
# RequiredComponents=gnome-flashback-init;gnome-flashback;i3;gnome-settings-daemon;
RequiredComponents=i3;org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.A11ySettings;org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.Clipboard;org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.Color;org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.Datetime;org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.Housekeeping;org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.Keyboard;org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.MediaKeys;org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.Mouse;org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.Power;org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.PrintNotifications;org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.Rfkill;org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.ScreensaverProxy;org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.Sharing;org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.Smartcard;org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.Sound;org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.Wacom;org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.XSettings;
11:15:47=>[]> cat /usr/share/xsessions/gnome-i3.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Name=GNOME i3
Comment=This session logs you into GNOME + i3
Exec=env GNOME_SHELL_SESSION_MODE=gnome-i3 gnome-session –session gnome-i3
TryExec=gnome-session
Type=Application
DesktopNames=GNOME-Classic;GNOME;

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image viewer tools

These are some of the image viewers that I know, pick your choice 🙂

  

    

      

        

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          sudo yum install imageinfo.i686 gtkimageview.i686 imagej.noarch gimmage.i686 gpicview.i386 gthumb.i686 immix.i686 mirage.i686 pony.noarch viewnior.i686 fotoxx.i686
        
      
    
  

systemctl enable and start service

Most of the times when I want to enable the service, I find myself enabling it immediately or it is vice versa. So, the commands I used to use were:

systemctl enable sshd.service
systemctl start sshd.service

But recently I learned that I do not need the 2 commands and this can be done in single command like below

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systemctl enable --now sshd.service

recoll – Desktop search tool

Name         : recoll
Version      : 1.23.7
Release      : 2.fc28
Arch         : x86_64
Size         : 2.1 M
Source       : recoll-1.23.7-2.fc28.src.rpm
Repo         : fedora
Summary      : Desktop full text search tool with Qt GUI
URL          : http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/
License      : GPLv2+
Description  : Recoll is a personal full text search package for Linux, FreeBSD and
             : other Unix systems. It is based on a very strong back end (Xapian), for
             : which it provides an easy to use, feature-rich, easy administration
             : interface.