Friday, January 1, 2010

Installing gnome-do in BT4

If you have not heard of gnome-do it is basically a launcher. But it can do alot more.
Warning: Adding Repos or PPA's that are outside of the control of Remote-Exploit may cause problems, as such me( and the remote-exploit team)are not responsible. I may be able to help but then again I may not. Gnome-do is very new and as such all of the issues (bugs) have not been worked out.

Ok to install Gnome-do you will need to add the PPA's to your repos list using your favorite text editor.
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root@dorkbox:# nano /etc/apt/sources.list
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Add the following two lines.
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deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
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The key should be added to your keyring as well.
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root@dorkbox:# gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring /tmp/gnome-do.keyring --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv

A5D19FDCAA6ABB440CD3464628A8205077558DD0

root@dorkbox:# gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring /tmp/gnome-do.keyring --export --armor

A5D19FDCAA6ABB440CD3464628A8205077558DD0 | apt-key add -

root@dorkbox:# rm /tmp/gnome-do.keyring
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Then
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root@dorkbox:# apt-get install gnome-do
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Gnome-do will add some packages that it needs in order to run. We will need to add a compositing manager we will come back to this later. Next add the gnome terminal, this is used to take advantage of any application that will run from a terminal (i.e. Back Track tools)
So to get it:
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root@dorkbox:# apt-get install gnome-terminal
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Once apt finishes we need to set gnome-terminal as the default terminal emulator (Do not worry you can change this later if you need to.) In order to change it
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root@dorkbox:# update-alternatives –-config x-terminal-emulator
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You will then see the following.
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Selection Alternative
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1 /usr/bin/xterm
2 /usr/bin/uxterm
3 /usr/bin/koi8rxterm
4 /usr/bin/lxterm
*+ 5 /usr/bin/gnome-terminal.wrapper
6 /usr/bin/konsole
7 /usr/bin/xfce4-terminal.wrapper

Press enter to keep the default[*], or type selection number:
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Before you type a number make note of your default in case you need to change back later on. Ok you can find gnome-do in the menu under Utilities. An easy way to work with it is to pull it to the desktop or panel to make a short-cut.
From Gnome-Do
Now click on it and it should open a window on the desktop in the upper right hand corner should be a little drop down arrow. Click it to bring up the preferences dialog. Under plugins look for gnome-terminal and check it and then refresh and close it.
From Gnome-Do
You can mess with the other preferences on your own. Ok now that you have everything setup click on the purple gnome-do icon or use the "super key" plus the space bar. Superkey may also be a windows key. This should bring up the basic gnome-do sceen. From there you can start typing commands or the names of applications. Try typing msfconsole. It should then give you options after a few letters. If you find run then tab over to the other side of the screen and hit enter. It should start the msfconsole running.
From Gnome-Do
If you tab to the second half of the screen and use the up down arrow keys to cycle through the other options. There should be a copy to clipboard as well as a few others. If a command does not work then re-type it and look for the "run in terminal" command. Another feature of Gnome-do is that of Docky. Docky is basically a front-end of Gnome-do and it allows you to create a launcher panel on your desktop. Using Docky you can drag and drop items onto the panel or drag off of the panel to delete.
From Gnome-Do
There is a lot you can do with both Gnome-do and Docky I will leave it up to you to explore it. If you don't have a Compositing Manager then you will need one to take advantage of all the cool features. Now if you run the "classic" mode of Gnome-do then you won't need one.The easiest way to do this would be to add xcompmgr. There are other managers but xcompmgr is light on resources in the background. In order to set it up use aptitude to grab it.
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root@dorkbox:#aptitude install xcompmgr
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Of course this will also pull other dependecies along. You can then start compositing manually via the ‘xcompmgr‘ command. With basic compositing enabled you should now be able to use the enhanced features of Gnome-Do, including the Mini Interface, Docky, Glass Interface and Nouveau. So now that you have everything needed start xcompmgr using the command above, then open the preferences for gnome-do again and this time go to the appearance tab and select docky. Now you should see the launcher panel at the bottom. If it does not show up then you may need to change the appearance themes a couple of times. Now go into your menu and find yourself a few tools that you would want to add to docky and drag them over. Some of the icons may show as up as an "X" I have not found a fix for this yet.


That's it. Again remember that gnome-do is new software and as such things may not work right. But with a little fun you can now launch your applications in a new way.
I encourage everyone who tries this to add their tips and tricks to this thread.

1 comment:

Eric said...

hello, and thanks for the tutorial. this seems to work quite well.

when i launch gnome-do and then hit the summon key, it comes up fine. but then I switch to another program and i am no longer able to summon gnome-do

:(