4 posts tagged “opensuse”

I think suse is a great O.S. It's just I wouldn't reccommend them as strongly as I did before that Microsoft deal. I just don't trust them. Will openSuSe upgrades suddenly require registration, payment? I don't know. Will they not include a program in their repositories because microsoft say they don't like it? I'm not sure.

So i'm really taking a wait-and-see approach to them.

ps. Things like changing the word 'root' to 'Administrator' doesn't fill me with warm stuff. Not sure if that is SuSe or KDE (see, due to a lack of trust...it starts already..).

I have an amd64 chip, with a via 82Cxxx sata chip set. Three ide drives and one SATA drive of 400 GB. I attempted to install OPENSUSE 10.3 x86_64. It uses the 2.6.18.22 kernel

This will post be updated.

First of all I tried a net install (smug mode: since I have an uber fast connection) using the 'upgrade' option. Found they have renamed the hard drives devices. hda is now sda, hdb is now sdb etc.. This turned out to be a problem...see later

Got to the point where I had to check the packages to be installed. There were about one to two hundred software conflicts. These turned out to be unsolvable. Went through each conflict (most painful) didn't work. You end up in a never ending loop. RPM hell doesn't exist anymore(!). I did notice at the bottom they have a feature that tries to solve this problem automatically by trying all configurations. Good effort suse guys, didn't work though.
    So I thought forget this, let me try a format and an install. This is OK because (smug mode) being a sensible chap, my root and home stuff are on separate partitions :)

Did the format, got to the install bit. STILL had the rpm conflicts! This I felt was a bit odd because I was using the default opensuse repositories.
These conflicts were solved though. I generally just choose not to install whatever is causing the problem, then install later.

So during the download/install connection to the default download server was intermittent.  It would stop and I would have to hit retry three times or so. This was my fault though, I should have chosen a mirror. Although I expected a slow connection, not to be disconnected.

So I went though the usual beautiful install screens (best of any Linux distribution I have seen) and booted up my new system. I then installed the proprietary NVIDIA driver (I know, I know but it's the easiest way to get my dual screen working. Still haven't managed to get the dual screen and the compiz stuff working), installed the smart package manager then ran my script to install all those lovely media gubbins 'they' don't want you to have (libdvdcss, xine etc), compiled the latest version of mplayer, tried kde4 preview and found it consisted of just a blue desktop and a few useless options, loaded kde 3.5x then had a cup of tea.

 Success! I thought, after my hard 'work', that I would watch one of my erm.. special videos. Opened up kaffeine to load it up. mmm...couldn't find the mount to my SATA drive. I start to sweat... I think: 'don't panic, i'm sure it's in the /dev list and I just need to mount it'.... umm not there.... now I panic.... I check the modules loaded... via..yup..ahci.... yup.... I run menuconfig and recompile....still wasn't detecting it... now I start crying....

Cue a kettle of kernel compilations and a pot of failure.

I re-install opensuse 10.2 x86_32 edition (I found the 64bit edition would often eat my memory. I think this was a kde thing though.. I mean I have 2gig of ram and occasionally it would have to go to swap. The box would also just freeze up every 30-40 days and I would have to reboot). 2.6.18.8-0.7-default Kernel. I have access to my special video collection.. I have my dual screen .. I still don't have my shiny compiz stuff.. but meh...so all in all yay!... I think

I'll wait for a while before I 'upgrade' again.

Update:
Looks like I am not the only one :) Will try and so some of the things suggested.
one.
two

HOWTO:

Installed OpenSuSe 10.2 a while ago. Suddenly when I rebooted there was something wrong with the sound. Whenever I would play a media file, such as a video or a sound file there would be a high pitched whine.

This solved the problem:

As root edit the following file with our favourite editor:

emacs -nw /etc/modprobe.d/sound

Append the following:

options snd-hda-intel position_fix=1 model=3stack

My file now looks like this:

alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel
options snd-hda-intel position_fix=1 model=3stack

Should work on most sane Linux distributions.

refs:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=48390&sid=4b2b98d4a5ce97180705784f1029b346

Download source:

Go to kernel.org
The latest stable version of the Linux kernel is:  2.6.18.3 2006-11-19 03:38 UTC F V VI C Changelog

Click on the 'F' link. This will download the kernel source code.

The file will be called:

linux-2.6.18.3.tar.bz2

Don't do the following as root, it's bad practice.

decompress (or 'unzip') it with the following command:

tar xvjf linux-2.6.18.3.tar.bz2

in the directory created from the previous command. Type

make menuconfig

This allows you to load various modules for your kernel. For example one can enable SATA drivers here. There is no easy option for this. Go through each option, read the help associated with it and select the ones you need / want :) When you are done save.

 Do not skip options!

Time to compile:
As root move the directory to /usr/src/

mv linux-2.6.18.3 /usr/src/.

Now cd (still as root) to that directory.

cd /usr/src/linux-2.6.18.3 

FROM THIS POINT ON ALL THE COMMANDS IN THIS HOWTO ARE EXECUTED FROM THIS DIRECTORY.

Then type:

make clean bzImage modules modules_install

Now get on your knees and prey.

If the compile b0rks, get some chicken bones and call your local Witch doctor because, you will find no more help here.

The 'clean' removes old files generated by previous attempts at compilation. Nothing critical removd here.

The bzImage compiles your actual kernel.
The modules bit compiles your kernel modules. Stuff you have marked 'M' in the prrevious menuconfig bit. If you have no idea what i mean.then shame on u for skipping the last part.
The modules_install, installs the modules into /lib/modules/linux-2.6.18.3

The above can be carried out seperatly if you want ie: make bzImage, make modules etc. The make modules install must be done as root though.

CREATE ramdisk.
Now copy and rename vmlinux from your source to directory to your /boot directory
 
cp vmlinux /boot/vmlinux-2.6.18.3

then do this command:

mkinitrd -k vmlinux-2.6.18.3 -i initrd-2.6.18.3

man page:
       mkinitrd  creates  initial  ramdisk  images for booting Linux.  The "/init" script in the compressed
       cpio archive loads all driver modules, creates all device nodes currently know by the kernel, does a
       filesystem  check  on the root filesystem and finally passes control to /sbin/init.  udev is used to
       create the device nodes in a tmpfs mounted /dev directory.  This directory  is  moved  over  to  the
       final root filesystem, essentially hiding the on-disk content below /dev on the root filesystem.

Translation:
I couldn't think of a better way of putting it:

"If you have built your main boot drivers as modules (e.g., SCSI host adapter, filesystem, RAID drivers) then you will need to create an initial RAMdisk image. The initrd is a way of sidestepping the chicken and egg problem of booting -- drivers are needed to load the root filesystem but the filesystem cannot be loaded because the drivers are on the filesystem.

note:

At the time of writing there are some issues with the modules.conf when moving from 2.4 to 2.6 kernels. Some module names have changed which seems to cause glitches with initrd.

Remove the old symbolic link to initrd

rm /boot/initrd

Now create a new one:

ln -s /boot/initrd-2.6.18.3 /boot/initrd

The previous mkinitrd command created the initrd-2.6.18.3 file.

Copy the  kernel and the System.map

To copy the kernel, run this command:

cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/bzimage-2.6.18.3

Copy and rename System.map to /boot/ directory:

cp System.map /boot/System.map-2.6.18.3

Remove the symbolic link to your old System.map in the boot directory

rm /boot/System.map

ln -s /boot/System.map-2.6.18.3 /boot/System.map

If you run this command

ls -l /boot/System.map

You should see something like this:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 2006-11-26 14:33 /boot/System.map -> /boot/System.map-2.6.18.3

Time to edit grub

First of all back up /boot/grub/menu.lst

cp /boot/grub/menu.lst .

Open it in an editor. I am using vi here

vi /boot/grub/menu.lst

Right now the first entry in my grub menu list reads like so:

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title SUSE Linux 10.1
    root (hd0,1)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2 vga=0x317    resume=/dev/hda4  splash=silent showopts
    initrd /boot/initrd

Copy the first line in *your* grub.lst and paste it to the bottom of the list. Then make the following changes to it

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: MYshinyNewKernel###
title MYshinyNewKernel -- SUSE Linux 10.1
    root (hd0,1)
    kernel /boot/bzimage-2.6.18.3 root=/dev/hda2 vga=0x317  resume=/dev/hda4  splash=silent showopts
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.18.3

Placing the edited line at the bottom means it will appear at the bottom of your boot list on restart. Place it at the top and it will appear at the top.

References:
http://unclean.org/howto/sii3114_linux.html
http://www.digitalhermit.com/linux/Kernel-Build-HOWTO.html

Any mistakes,criticisms etc... post a comment.