Sean Feeney
Architect of the digital age

Electric Sheep Screensaver in Fedora 7

5 October 2007

Based on Erik Reckase’s: electricsheep screensaver with gnome-screensaver in Ubuntu

I have to run the screensaver under gnome. There is a lot of documentation on the xscreensaver hack to get this to work under KDE, but I couldn’t get it to work.

Getting Ready:
You will need the following packages to compile the electricsheep client :

All of these were already installed except xloadimage, and yum did not have an xloadimage listing. So I had to download and install an old Fedora 3 xloadimage.

Step 1:
Grab the latest sources from electricsheep.org (currently 2.6.8):
http://electricsheep.org/index.cgi?&menu=code
Click the source tarball link, and extract the folder to your home directory.

Step 2:
In the electricsheep-2.6.8 directory, perform
Code:

<br></br>./configure<br></br>make clean all<br></br>

Step 3:
Edit Makefile with a text editor. You need to remove these lines from the end of the file:
Code:

<br></br> test -e $(SCREENSAVER_DATADIR) && $(INSTALL) electricsheep.xml $(SCREENSAVER_DATADIR)<br></br> $(INSTALL) -d $(pkgdatadir)<br></br>

Delete these lines from the file and save it. These lines referred installing the xscreensaver xml file that no longer works for the gnome-screensaver. The test failed, so the install will fail unless these lines are removed.

Step 4:
Code:

<br></br>make install<br></br>

Step 5:
Create a folder that will hold your Sheep. Many folks use ~/.sheep for this, but it can be anything in your local area.

Step 6:
This is the secret sauce. As root, or using sudo, create a text file in the /usr/share/applications/screensavers directory called esheep.sh, and paste the following text into the file:
Code:

<br></br>#!/bin/sh<br></br>exec electricsheep --nick xxxx --root 1 --max-megabytes 2000 --zoom 1 --display-anim 1 --show-errors 0 --nrepeats 2 --frame-rate 30 --save-dir yyyy<br></br>

Replace xxxx with the nickname you would like to be known by on the server.
Replace yyyy with the full path to the directory created in Step 5.

Step 7:
Code:

<br></br>sudo chmod 755 esheep.sh<br></br>

Step 8:
As root, or using sudo, create a text file in the /usr/share/applications/screensavers directory called electricsheep.desktop, and past the following text into the file:
Code:

<br></br>[Desktop Entry]<br></br>Encoding=UTF-8<br></br>Name=ElectricSheep<br></br>Comment=Electric Sheep is a distributed screen-saver that harnesses idle computers into a render farm with the purpose of animating and evolving artificial life-forms. This module requires a high-bandwidth, always-on connection to the internet such as DSL or cable-modem. The first time you run it, it normally takes 5 to 10 minutes before the first sheep is downloaded and displayed. After that, it should come up immediately. If you have installed the hacked xscreensaver that supports passing key-presses onto the graphics hack and this feature is enabled, then pressing the up arrow-key transmits a vote for the currently displayed sheep to the server. The votes are the basis of a fitness function for an evolutionary algorithm on the sheep genomes. Vote for the sheep you like, and they will mate, reproduce, and evolve! See http://electricsheep.org for more information. This is version 2.6.8.<br></br>TryExec=esheep.sh<br></br>Exec="esheep.sh"<br></br>StartupNotify=false<br></br>Terminal=false<br></br>Type=Application<br></br>Categories=Screensaver<br></br>

Step 9:
gnome-screensaver resets every 10 minutes as part of the random selection - even if random isn’t chosen. We need to change that to a larger number, otherwise nothing will render or download properly.
Code:

<br></br>gconftool-2 --type int --set /usr/share/gnome-screensaver/cycle-delay 10000<br></br>

Step 10:
System->Preferences->Power Management: Change the setting to put the display to sleep when inactive to ‘Never’ by dragging the bar all the way to the right. Alternatively,
Code:

<br></br>gconftool-2 --type int --set /usr/share/gnome-power-manager/ac_sleep_display 0<br></br>

Step 11:
Open the gnome-screensaver selection dialog, pick electricsheep, and enjoy. It might take some time to get a sheep, so be patient. If you want to test it, you can download individual sheep from the electricsheep website and place them in your sheep storage directory.

Posted in fedora, gnome, linux

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