So, I ran into an interesting issue two days ago, and it makes me wonder if the ubuntu installer is in fact broken.
Many of you know that a moved back to ubuntu after a two month stint with fedora. I kept my same home folder to keep preferences and such. So, I was a little surprised when I went to go and change some user preferences with the gui tool and my user wasn't there, didn't exist. What happened? Well it seems that as the ubuntu installer made my user it didn't change permissions on my home folder to my new user of will with a uid of 1000, but kept my old user of will with a uid of 500. This caused some kind of hang up and the only thing that I could think to do was to backup and reinstall.
So, what I would expect is what both fedora and Opensuse do. They ask you, "hey, there is already a home folder by that name, should we change the permissions so it is yours?"
OpenSUSE has another beta out. This time it’s beta 5. Here are the announcements, both written by Joe Brockmeier, from the OpenSUSE news room:
Greetings, openSUSE fans! We have another development release ready for your testing pleasure. openSUSE 11.1 beta 5 is now available for immediate download and testing.
You may have noticed that we were scheduled to release RC 1 today. However, as Stephan Kulow mentioned on openSUSE-Factory list on Tuesday, we have several blocker bugs and 11 P1 bugs still present. While we’re ready to do another release today, we decided that it wasn’t ready to be called a release candidate. This shouldn’t push back the final release, but it will mean that we will only plan to have one release candidate.
With just a little more than a month before the public release on December 18th, there’s still plenty to do. So, roll up your sleeves and start downloading!
Call for Testing
We all want openSUSE 11.1 to be the best release yet, and we need your help to get there. This release is ready for widespread testing, and we’re encouraging everyone to download and test the beta releases. Please run the release through your usual routine, and let us know about any bugs or other issues that you find. Remember that this is a beta release, and is not suitable for use on production systems. Though many openSUSE users can and do use the Factory distribution and/or beta release for day-to-day work we want to stress that it’s entirely possible that you will encounter serious bugs.
See openSUSE.org/Testing for more information on testing.
To follow the testing and development process, we suggest that you subscribe to the openSUSE-Factory mailing list, and join the #openSUSE-Factory channel on Freenode to discuss openSUSE development.
What’s changed since beta 4?
Major changes in this release include:
- More 11.1 branding is now in place.
- Upgrade to PackageKit 0.3.9
- Integration of Smolt finished
- More translations!
- Linux kernel updated to 2.6.27.5
- KDE 4.1.3
- Xfce 4.4.3
- Many updated packages, including: Amarok, Banshee, Blender, Digikam, Bazaar, Frozen Bubble, The GIMP, LyX, and Wine.
See the Factory News page for changes in the Factory distribution between release announcements. DistroWatch also carries an expanded list of packages being shipped in the Factory distribution.
OpenOffice.org 3.0 is shaping up nicely for 11.1. Petr Mladek has sent in the following new and remaining bugs for OpenOffice.org:
+ OOo does not start in KDE when OpenOffice_org-gnome is installed (bnc#442678)
+ Pyuno components are still not registered
+ Mono integration is not correctly installed
+ Localized strings are not updated from extra sources
+ The user configuration includes symlinks to /usr/share/ooo3 instead of real files. This may be a feature, but it might also cause problems in the future
+ Missing OOo-sdk compat stuff (bnc#428403)
+ Suse-puzzler.xls works only partly; e.h. “Sneaky Peak” or “About” works but the “Shuffle” does nothing. Also, you can’t move the puzzle pieces with a mouse.
These bugs are being worked on for RC1.
Media and Download
11.1 beta 5 can be found at http://software.opensuse.org/developer. You can find mirrors that have beta 5 images here:
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.1-Beta5/iso/
This release does include PPC media, so users with PowerPC machines have the opportunity to test beta 5 on those as well.
Most Annoying Bugs
While many bugs have been eliminated since the last beta, we still have a few remaining (and new) bugs that testers should be aware of:
Selecting KDE 3.5 also installs KDE4 workspace and defaults to KDE4. Workaround: Choose KDE3 desktop at login manager.
Installation via network on Pegasos2 and Efika is not possible since the initial image does not contain the network drivers (they are available after installation)
Bug #439126: Hibernation does not work with 32-bit PAE kernels.
Bug #432980: On some Intel chipsets (945GM) display can’t wake from sleep.
Bug #444127: kupdateapplet shows error when license is requested
Bug #437735: printers are not installed
Bug #444519: the i586 DVD does not contain any i686 glibc
Future Release Announcements
Note to openSUSE contributors: If you have any changes or features to call out for future release announcements, please send an email to Zonker with any information that should be in that announcement. (Preferably at least two days before the scheduled release.
And here’s the announcement from the mailing list:
Greetings, openSUSE fans! We have another development release ready
for your testing pleasure. openSUSE 11.1 beta 5 is now available for
immediate download and testing.You may have noticed that we were scheduled to release RC 1 today.
However, as Stephan Kulow mentioned on openSUSE-Factory list [1] on
Tuesday, we have several blocker bugs and 11 P1 bugs still present.
While we’re ready to do another release today, we decided that itwasn’t ready to be called a release candidate. This shouldn’t push
back the final release, but it will mean that we will only plan to
have one release candidate.With just a little more than a month [2] before the public release on
December 18th, there’s still plenty to do. So, roll up your sleeves
and start downloading!Call for Testing
================We all want openSUSE 11.1 to be the best release yet, and we need your
help to get there. This release is ready for widespread testing, and
we’re encouraging everyone to download and test the beta releases.
Please run the release through your usual routine, and let us know
about any bugs or other issues that you find. Remember that this is a
beta release, and is not suitable for use on production systems.
Though many openSUSE users can and do use the Factory distribution
and/or beta release for day-to-day work we want to stress that it’sentirely possible that you will encounter serious bugs.
See openSUSE.org/Testing for more information on testing.
To follow the testing and development process, we suggest that you
subscribe to the openSUSE-Factory mailing list, and join the
#openSUSE-Factory channel on Freenode to discuss openSUSE development.What’s changed since beta 4?
============================Major changes in this release include:
* More 11.1 branding is now in place.
* Upgrade to PackageKit 0.3.9.
* KDE4: NetworkManager and power management Plasmoids now available
* Integration of Smolt finished
* More translations! [3]
* Linux kernel updated to 2.6.27.5
* KDE 4.1.3* Xfce 4.4.3
* Many updated packages, including: Amarok, Banshee, Blender, Digikam,
Bazaar, Frozen Bubble, The GIMP, LyX, and Wine.See the Factory News page for changes in the Factory distribution
between release announcements. [4] DistroWatch also carries an
expanded list of packages being shipped in the Factory distribution.
[5]OpenOffice.org 3.0 is shaping up nicely for 11.1. Petr Mladek has sent
in the following new and remaining bugs for OpenOffice.org:
+ OOo does not start in KDE when OpenOffice_org-gnome is installed (bnc#442678)
+ Pyuno components are still not registered
+ Mono integration is not correctly installed
+ Localized strings are not updated from extra sources
+ The user configuration includes symlinks to /usr/share/ooo3 instead
of real files. This may be a feature, but it might also cause problems
in the future+ Missing OOo-sdk compat stuff (bnc#428403)
+ Suse-puzzler.xls works only partly; e.h. “Sneaky Peak” or “About”
works but the “Shuffle” does nothing. Also, you can’t move the puzzle
pieces with a mouse.These bugs are being worked on for RC1.
Media and Download
==================11.1 beta 5 can be found at http://software.opensuse.org/developer.
You can find mirrors that have beta 5 images here:http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.1-Beta5/iso/
This release does include PPC media, so users with PowerPC machines
have the opportunity to test beta 5 on those as well.Most Annoying Bugs
==================
While many bugs have been eliminated since the last beta, we still
have a few remaining (and new) bugs that testers should be aware of:Selecting KDE 3.5 also installs KDE4 workspace and defaults to KDE4.
Workaround: Choose KDE3 desktop at login manager.
Installation via network on Pegasos2 and Efika is not possible since
the initial image does not contain the network drivers (they are
available after installation)Bug #439126: Hibernation does not work with 32-bit PAE kernels.
Bug #432980: On some Intel chipsets (945GM) display can’t wake from sleep.
Bug #444127: kupdateapplet shows error when license is requested
Bug #437735: printers are not installed
Bug #444519: the i586 DVD does not contain any i686 glibcFuture Release Announcements
============================Note to openSUSE contributors: If you have any changes or features to
call out for future release announcements, please send an email to
Zonker (zonker@xxxxxxxxxxxx) with any information that should be in
that announcement. (Preferably at least two days before the scheduled
release.[1] http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2008-11/msg00402.html
[2] http://en.opensuse.org/Roadmap
[3] http://i18n.opensuse.org/stats/trunk/toplist.php[4] http://en.opensuse.org/Factory/News
[5] http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=suseHave a lot of fun!
–
Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier
openSUSE Community Manager
jzb@xxxxxxxxxxhttp://zonker.opensuse.org/
http://blogs.zdnet.com/community/
So there you have it. Grab the DVD via bittorrent and take a look!
I stole this straight from Joe Brockmeier’s blog, but couldn’t pass up the opportunity. This is a really cool list.
He has a list of the things that are unique about openSUSE over other distributions. Here’s the list he provided:
- YaST
- Zypper
- openSUSE Build Service
- The “Slab” menu — now upstream in KDE, but still unique to openSUSE / SLED on GNOME
- Default install “full of useful software”
- Forums (I was thinking of the distro itself, but it makes sense that the support and such from the forums is a good reason to use openSUSE.)
- Direct participation in upstream development of GNOME and KDE, and the choice of both in openSUSE
- “Polished” desktops — I do think we ship very well-polished versions of GNOME and KDE
- One-click install
- Retail box - Our retail box is a great way for beginners to get started with openSUSE
- Security features (AppArmor, SUSE Firewall)
- Mono integration - done very well in openSUSE
- Software Repos in the openSUSE Build Service (I’m a Gwibber fan, which lives in the “FunkyPenguin” repo)
- Some people like the DVD image with lots of software vs. live CDs with a minimal selection
- Several people mentioned stability, though this is hard to quantify and in my experience, stability is usually a benefit of Linux in general
- Dual-arch x86_64 implementation — so you can easily run 32-bit apps on 64-bit openSUSE
- Two-year lifespan — a reasonably long lifecycle for a release, not too short, but not aimed at mission-critical areas where a system will just run until it dies on
- the same OS version
- Server support — openSUSE makes a very good server distro
- An awesome mascot (really, Geeko wins that one hands down)
Nice work, Joe! Head on over to his blog entry to read the whole posting.
Okay, it’s not quite that bad but that’s how I feel. It’s been a long and dusty road fixing the major bugs in the Mono 2.0 VMware Appliance and LiveCD.
Fixed in 2.0-1: mono-debugger was missing. This is a big deal because this is the first release where the debugger is released at the same time as, and with guaranteed* compatibility with, the mono release.
* no guarantees, implied or otherwise, unless you have some other agreement with Novell 
Fixed in 2.0-2: No sound support. This took a while to fix. Why is hal-resmgr not required by any package or pattern?
Fixed in 2.0-3: Absolutely no scalable (truetype) fonts installed. You wouldn’t have noticed probably but it breaks Moonlight which, though not included (until the 1.0 release probably), we definitely want to work properly.
Those of you who had problems with ftp.novell.com should find that it’s working much better now. Please use the torrents.
Since I’m not at all confident that nothing else will go wrong I’m not going to link directly to anything this time. Find the LiveCD or VMware Appliance at the Mono download page. Bonus points to whoever finds the next bug serious enough that I have to fix it and re-release… again.
Coming soon for Mono 2.2…
The Mono 2.0 LiveCD was delayed a bit from the Mono 2.0 release but it is available now. The delay was cause by me culling unneeded packages too aggressively. On the upside we’re down to only 562MB!
Help your neighbor and join the torrent or grab it from ftp.novell.com.
The content is very nearly the same as the VMware appliance released this morning, including:
- Mono 2.0
- MonoDevelop 1.0
- Banshee 1.2.1
- F-Spot 0.5.0.1
- GNOME Do 0.6.0
- Tomboy 0.12.0
- Tasque 0.1.6
- Various ASP.NET Applications
- … and more
Update: New images have been uploaded, now with sound! It turns out you couldn’t do sound of any kind. The missing package (aside from alsa)? hal-resmgr, which sets ACLs on sound devices amongst other things.
One of my favorite ways to abuse the openSUSE Build Service is to link the packages I want to use into my home project. This is remarkably convenient but it wastes CPU cycles and disk space. It’s generally considered A Bad Thing™. But there are some good reasons why I do it and some ways openSUSE could change so that I won’t need to.
Executive Summary: Let upstream projects have their own top-level projects.
Currently it’s very difficult to get a top-level build service project created. You file a bug saying that you want one and they close the bug WONT-FIX. It’s a win-win. There’s a desire inside SUSE to keep the top-level as clean as possible. The solution, from their point of view, is to limit top-level to categories. People who think categories are a good thing need to read Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger, or at least watch the Google Tech Talk. The result is massive projects like GNOME:Community.
GNOME:Community is not all bad but it has some fundamental problems, most prominently that there are often at least a few packages there which are older than the packages on your system. The underlying cause of this is that there are too many packages and not enough people interested in maintaining them. In some cases someone volunteers to maintain a package and does a fine job for a while but then loses interest and the package stagnates.
On the other end of the spectrum we find projects like Banshee. The Banshee developers maintain their own build service project. When they have a release they will update their packages because they want to be able to publish a 1-click link. If I add the Banshee repository I will always have the latest version and I won’t get any fluff I don’t need. This is the right way to do it. I would like to see top-level projects for every major project that wants to participate in openSUSE. There should be top-level projects for Pidgin (well, purple anyway), F-Spot, GIMP, Ekiga, etc. That way I can choose to get the latest GIMP without getting the latest F-Spot if I want to and I know that it’s maintained by people who care about it and are committed to quality.
Not every piece of software should have it’s own top-level project, of course. Some are closely related to each other such that it doesn’t make sense to keep them separate: Pidgin and Finch, for instance, or Firefox and Thunderbird. Others share a release schedule and have interdependencies that would prevent them from splitting up effectively, like GNOME. These should be brought under a single project, but this is not strange because they are already under a single upstream project (GNOME, Mozilla, etc.).
Many upstream projects do not distribute binaries. When they do it’s often just the Windows and Mac binaries because it can be difficult or expensive to build your own. openSUSE could be the place to get binaries of your favorite software, but not if we try to pigeonhole them into someone else’s project. It’s a risk for GIMP to advertise that high quality binaries of 2.6 are available from openSUSE if adding the repository is also going to upgrade your Tomboy.
It’s also difficult to properly categorize a project. Suppose there were a slick new open source file-sharing application and we put it under file-sharing but a year down the road it gets an instant-messaging feature and this feature becomes the feature people really like about it. Should we move it to an IM category? What about a nice DAAP server. Does it go under multimedia or file-sharing? Let’s toss out categories right now and make decent use of tags instead. The technology is already there, tags have been an underused feature of OBS since the beginning.
Making OBS more appealing to upstream projects is good for everyone. Upstream gets a release build system and a network of willing mirrors for free. openSUSE gets free publicity and better coordination with upstream. Users get repositories they know are well maintained by people who care about the project without any extra fluff they don’t want or need.
I just finished packaging gimp 2.6 for openSUSE 11.0 last night and figured I’d share it with the rest of you.
Sorry, I couldn’t find the 1 click logo stuff quickly. (I welcome help on that).
Update (many thanks again to FunkyPenguin):
So, I went from Fedora to OpenSUSE on the laptop. Total, I installed OpenSuSE 3 times on the macbook pro. The last one I finally got it to go. But there are just some things that I could not get working. One of which was the keyboard never worked properly. No matter what I did I couldn't get SuSE to figure out the right keyboard. It defaulted to saying that it was some microsoft keyboard. When I used YaST to change it to a macbookpro keyboard and restarted x, there was no keyboard. I could type and type and it would do nothing. Not even switch to another TTY or have the power button allow me to log out. The same when I tried macintosh or generic pc105. So, no keyboard for me. Next, the mouse. The default mouse configuration is really weird. And if you don't change it to be just right there would be no mouse when x was restarted.
Aside from the issues with xorg having configuration issues. I have found that using YaST AND editing stuff manually can lead to conflicts. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why have a tool that doesn't let you use other tools?
So, with the laptop I am agreeing Stephen Shaw, ubuntu seems to be best for the MacBook Pro. I really did have everything working under ubuntu. So, until Intrepid is released I think that I am going to try out Mac OS X.
When packaging a new program for the first time one of the big headaches is figuring out where all your dependencies are. This difficulty is greatly mitigated on openSUSE by a little tool called webpin. It’s available in the openSUSE:Tools repository.
When you first build out your basic spec file you have little or no idea what goes in BuildRequires. For a few projects you don’t need anything there at all so I like to just go ahead and run osc build and see what happens. If you’re not using OBS to build your software then I’m very sorry for you. Usually the configure script will stop somewhere saying that it couldn’t find something it needs, usually a header file or a pkg-config (.pc) file. This is where webpin comes in.
Suppose you get a line that says:
No package 'avahi-sharp' found
This means that configure is looking for a pkg-config file called avahi-sharp.pc. So with webpin installed we type webpin avahi-sharp.pc and we get a result that looks something like this:
1 results (1 packages) found for "avahi-sharp.pc" in openSUSE_110
* avahi-mono: Mono Bindings for avahi, the D-BUS Service for Zeroconf and Bonjour
- 0.6.22 [suse-oss]
>> /usr/lib/pkgconfig/avahi-sharp.pc
Now we know to add avahi-mono to our BuildRequires.
Later we might get an error that looks like this:
session-glue.c:5:26: error: X11/SM/SMlib.h: No such file or directory
Unfortunately for us this kind of error comes from gcc and is harder to see in all the gcc error: gobbledygook. If the upstream maintainer had been more careful we would have seen a configure error instead. But no matter! we just type webpin X11/SM/SMlib.h to find that this header file is found in xorg-x11-libSM-devel.
My new package packaging time is as much as cut in half thanks to this excellent tool. Many thanks to those responsible. There is also a web interface for webpin (I’m pretty sure it started out that way, hence the name).
Side note: RPM really needs to have automatic provides for pkg-config files so that we can use BuildRequires: pc(avahi-sharp) >= 0.6 instead of explicit package names. pkg-config is one of the best things to happen to software in a long time IMHO and RPM should be taking full advantage of it.
The package used for this example was Tangerine, a very nice little DAAP server written by James Willcox.
From my good buddy Michael Loeffler, on OpenSuse news:
The openSUSE survey results are out now. The survey we made in July/August time frame attracted over 12,000 participants. Here is a short summary on changes compared to the last one we did approximately 1 1/2 year ago with the openSUSE 10.2 release. The summary is in the same order as the questions are.
meanwhile over 90% of our users have broadband access and 3/4 of them have a flat rate. Percentage of people having slow or no internet connection is below 5%. Anyway we should find a way getting our distro physically to emerging countries as we fear they didn?t even take part at the survey due to internet issues 
usage of an OS called Windows dropped from 31% to 21% which either tells us people do the full step to Linux or we may lose newbies? Vista is not there yet, XP usage is approx. 3 times larger then Vista usage KDE4 is already adopted by kind of 40% out of all KDE users, this is quite impressive to us as we?re mainly talking about KDE 4.0 which isn?t that mature as KDE 4.1 is today (yes, we know KDE 4.1 still needs some work to be perfect ;-)) involvement in openSUSE has risen strongly, from 15% to 25% and that?s all over the place - be it openSUSE Build Service, bug reporting, openSUSE Forums or others. We?ve seen happily that the main reasons for not being involved in the openSUSE project was no time or familiy. But some people mentioned they don?t know how or it?s not clear where to start. We definitely need to address the latter one. openSUSE and the first experience with Linux is down from 11% to 6%, that either tells us users from other Linux distros are joining or we?re losing people new to Linux rating for ?Ease of installation? climbed up strongly, obviously the streamlined installation workflow was the right thing to do. On the question what should be changed for future versions the wish for more software packages declined. So it looks like the openSUSE Build Service and the 1-click installation helps many users to get additional software from.
The things above are for us the most eye catching results. In general the results are pretty similar to the last survey. For comparison you find the old survey on the UX page. As you see those results - at least some times - open room for interpretation in one or the other direction. For feedback please use the opensuse-project mailing list.
We want to thank all people participated at the survey and some of them will receive soon an openSUSE t-shirt or cap.
How fun is school.
Yeah, it’s not. Especially when you’re starting a new job, too.
The fun part is, I got a dark red 2004 Nissan Maxima. Which I am currently enjoying a great deal.
None of which has to do with Linux. But it’s my blog and I get the liberty of going off topic. At least I’m posting.
So I thought I’d take on the challenge of doing a triple-boot setup on my laptop. Yawn, right? Everyone’s done that.
Except not everyone has done it with Windows Vista, MacOS X Leopard, and OpenSUSE 11.0 all on the same non-Mac machine. A machine much like my Dell Inspiron E1705.
I took said challenge, and it only took about 23 tries before I got it.
Here are some pictures of the machine booting, logging into, and the desktop of each OS:
OpenSUSE 11.0
booting
Click for larger image
login
Click for larger image
desktop
Click for larger image
MacOS Leopard
booting
Click for larger image
login
Click for larger image
desktop
Click for larger image
Windows Vista
booting
Click for larger image
login
Click for larger image
desktop
Click for larger image
Most often, I will be hanging out in the OpenSUSE 11.0 installation. For that annoying software that only runs in Windows, I am forced, completely against my will, to have it on the machine, as well. And, I have recently become interested in the iPhone SDK, which of course only runs in MacOS 10.5.2 (Leopard) or newer. Hence, the need for all three OSes. And, I have just never seen it done, so I thought I’d jump in and do it. Instructions mostly came from here.
Fascinating.
So, back to the off-topic. I am selling a white 2004 Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor (click for larger image):
For all the information you could ever want about the car, including lots of pictures, take a look at this page.
It’s been another exciting and worth while Hack Week. Sadly I had a number of high priority Mono updates to push to SuSE so I probably spent only about half of Monday through Wednesday hacking. Thursday through Saturday were spent at the Utah Open Source Conference (more on that soon). The real highlight for me was spending the week with Aaron Bockover, Hubert Figuiere, Sandy Armstrong, Gabriel Burt, Brad Taylor, Mario Carrion, Brian Merrell, and Jared Allen. Technically I’m not on their team(s) but they kindly let me bum rides off them and eat their snacks. Good times.
I’m really looking forward to new features for Banshee like the Muine-like interface and the new track editor. Good stuff happens at Novell. Seriously.
DigitalMe
My hack week project was to package DigitalMe and get it ready for distribution. DigitalMe is Novell’s Open Source, Open Standards, InfoCard (CardSpace) Selector, part of the Bandit Project. I am not the best person to ask but I think I can summarize it as like OpenID but you can also generate your own credentials. The project needed some help or it would not get into openSUSE 11.1 or SLE 11 so I volunteered my time. We’re almost there, but not quite. I will post a link to the package repository when it’s done and with some luck we’ll get it submitted to SuSE before feature freeze.
Came across this article from Matt Hartley. He gives openSUSE a very positive review. Go check it out.
I’m sitting in the airport waiting to head out to San Francisco. Starting tomorrow as many know is Linux World Expo. I’m really excited and can’t wait. I’m going so that I can help with the opensuse booth. This year there is an openSUSE community day. If you go to that link there is a list of the events. They have some really good presenters that will cover some really cool topics. So, if you are passing though make sure that you stop by the openSUSE community day. I can’t wait!
From what I understand there are some really good booths to stop by as well, One of them is Linux Journal. I’ve been working with them to get our conference in their magazine and the person that I was talking to said there will be some sort of really cool secret swag this year.
If you are going to be there, I’ll see you then.
I’ve been very busy this last two weeks updating pages and working on finalizing details for UTOSC 2008, held August 28-30, 2008. For instance, the Fedora booth is coming along nicely. For a conference of around 400, we should have a pretty good booth turnout. I had Jeffrey Tadlock, Paul Frields (who’s also keynoting btw) and its possible other NA Ambassadors may attend. I’m really excited about this development.
In addition, Joe Brockmeier of OpenSUSE will also be keynoting and we’ve got quite a list of presenters on our website. Our goal is to help open source grow in Utah, and by providing this conference once a year, we can help our local LUGs and open source leaders. We have approximately 50 presentations, plus events and other fun stuff up our sleeve over this 3 day conference.
One of the great events returning this year is the Guru Labs Troubleshooting Challenge. We hope to have this event bigger and better this year, with cash prizes for the winner(s). There will be sign-ups available on Thursday morning at the registration booth and the contest will run all day Friday, crowning a winner Friday night!
Another great return from last year is KnowledgeBlue. With opensourceTV, they’ll be recording the video for several of our presentations and keynotes. They’ll be working just like last year (only better) to provide interviews as well with some of the leaders of the open source community. We expect you all will enjoy the videos as they go up on youtube. This year, they will focus on multiple angles and getting a good quality presentation from the presenters.
Lastly, I’d like to talk a little bit about Family Day at UTOSC, August 30, 2008. If you take a look at the presentations on Saturday, you’ll notice a bit of a trend. With a few exceptions, presentations are intended to help the family. Also, we are working on activities for the kiddies such as an OLPC, videos on MythTV, edubuntu, Fedora Electronics Lab demos and more in our try-it lab. We’re also working to acquire a moon bounce and sumo suits (for the big kids). Saturday looks to be a ton of fun.
NOTE: This doesn’t mean that we have enough family stuff, and in fact, we really don’t. One thing I’d like to see, is a presentation on content filtering for the family. Something like “Howto use Dan’s Guardian effectively” or a discussion of pfsense, smoothwall or other firewalling/filtering tools. If you have a presentation you’d like to suggest in this area, please let me know by commenting or emailing me.
I hope to see many of you there as the cost is quite low at $70 and if you are LUG member, its only $35 until August 7 for the early bird pricing. Read more on our website at http://2008.utosc.com or register directly with eventbrite at http://utosc2008.eventbrite.com.
See you all there.
Herlo
The openSUSE Project is proud to announce the 1.0 release of the openSUSE Build Service. The 1.0 release provides all the features necessary to support building openSUSE in the public build systems and allowing direct contributions to openSUSE from all contributors. Developers can now submit contributions to openSUSE directly at build.opensuse.org.
The openSUSE Build Service allows developers to create and maintain packages for openSUSE and many other Linux distributions, including CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, Red Hat, and Ubuntu. With the 1.0 release, the openSUSE Build Service expands its scope to building the entire openSUSE release, and provides everyone with the same access and transparent interface to work on the openSUSE distribution.
The openSUSE Build Service has offered a simple collaboration system since its inception for groups to work closely together on packages or solutions stacks. The 1.0 release improves on existing functionality to allow the Build Service to scale to larger projects like openSUSE’s Factory distribution, and to allow building openSUSE’s stable releases in the open.
What the changes mean for contributors:
- Anyone can find a package’s working copy as maintained by the official packager or packaging team. Contributors can submit changes against the working copy.
- The submission handling and notification system has been put in place, allowing any contributor to request a merge of their changes to a project.
- Quality assurance happens before contributions are merged. Test builds of a suggested change are accessible to anyone.
- Improved branch handling. It is easy to set up a branch of a package. The branch will build in the same way as the original package, but can be modified.
- Source handling is improved in 1.0. It’s now possible to easily maintain a branch, and modifications are stored without creating a full copy. This makes it easier to maintain features based on the latest copy of package. The Build Service builds the latest packages, including modifications, automatically.
The majority of this functionality is implemented on the server side. The rest can be implemented by the various Build Service clients, so that contributors can take advantage of the new features.
The Build Service team has also introduced a number of smaller improvements and bugfixes to make the system more scalable and usable.
The openSUSE Build Service is now considered “feature complete” for collaboration. The Build Service team is looking for additional feedback on improving the openSUSE Build Service as it will now be the standard tool for working on the distribution.
A lot of Linux/openSUSE users aren’t aware that there are more to file system permissions than the obvious Owner, Group, Other / Read, Write, Execute setup.
All major Linux file systems (ext3, reiserfs, etc) support access control lists (ACL) and its very easy to use them.
To see if a file or directory has an ACL set on it, you can use ls:
inspidell:~ # ls -ld /home/sontek
You’ll get output similar to this:
drwxr-xr-x+ 55 sontek users 4096 Jul 4 13:42 /home/sontek
The + at the end of the permissions means that we are using extended permissions (ACL’s). To get the list of ACL’s on the file/directory, run the getfacl <file> command.
inspidell:~ # getfacl /home/sontek
getfacl: Removing leading '/' from absolute path names
# file: home/sontek
# owner: sontek
# group: users
user::rwx
group::r-x
other::r-x
default:user::rwx
default:group:users:---
default:mask::r-x
default:other::r-x
This shows both the ACL’s and the basic Linux permissions.
To modify or set ACL’s you use the setfacl command. Here are a few examples of how to use it:
Grant a single user read access to a directory in your home directory.
setfacl -m u:mom:r /home/sontek/photos
Remove all access from a group on a file
setfacl -x g:developers payroll.xml
You can also copy a set of permissions from one file to another
getfacl file1 | setfacl --set-file=- file2
Remove all ACL’s
setfacl -k /home/sontek
For those of you who are not console jockey’s, you’ll realize quickly that the default nautilus setup doesn’t have a way to view, modify, or add any ACL’s, to get this support you’ll need to install two packages, with opensuse you do this with zypper:
inspidell:~ # zypper in eiciel nautilus-eiciel
Before the ACL permissions show up in nautilus, you’ll have to restart it:
inspidell:~ # pkill nautilus
After this, you’ll be greeted with a very easy to use dialog for modifying ACL’s:
another great nautilus permissions tip I learned from Christer Edwards is to enable advanced permissions in nautilus, this is a much better UI for managing permissions and should probably be the default.
gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_advanced_permissions True
A screenshot of this in action:
I hope this helps you better secure and manage your computer with the more advanced features your Linux file systems both from console and inside GNOME.
Well if you want your voice to be heard and believe that openSUSE would be so much cooler if only they would add or change something, now is your chance. There is an ideas page for openSUSE 11.1. There are already several ideas up there and I’m sure they are looking for some refinement and new ideas there.
This is the perfect time to do it as they are gearing up for openSUSE 11.1 alphas.
openSUSE 11.1 Gnome ideas (These are for the Gnome desktop)
This is from Andreas. THANKS!!! So come one, come all and help make openSUSE 11.1 a great release. There is no time like the present. Jump in early and grab that first alpha on July 24!
——– Announcement ——–
With openSUSE 11.0 out the door, it’s time to start thinking about openSUSE 11.1. The public release of openSUSE 11.1 is scheduled for December 18, 2008, six months after the release of openSUSE 11.0.
The full schedule for the release cycle is as follows:
- Thu, Jul 24: openSUSE 11.1 Alpha1
- Thu, Aug 21: openSUSE 11.1 Alpha2
- Thu, Sep 18: openSUSE 11.1 Beta1 - snapshot release
- Thu, Oct 02: openSUSE 11.1 Beta2 - snapshot release
- Thu, Oct 16: openSUSE 11.1 Beta3 - snapshot release
- Thu, Oct 30: openSUSE 11.1 Beta4 - snapshot release
- Thu, Nov 13: openSUSE 11.1 RC1 - snapshot release
- Thu, Nov 27: openSUSE 11.1 RC2 - snapshot release
- Thu, Dec 4: openSUSE 11.1 GM - final release
- Thu, Dec 18 openSUSE 11.1 public release
This is, of course, a tentative schedule. Any critical or show-stopping bugs may delay betas and release candidates.
Major areas of interest in this release include:
- GNOME 2.24
- KDE: KDE 4.1.1 (optionally KDE 3.5.10)
- Continued improvement in the software update stack
- Linux kernel 2.6.27+
Want to get involved? The start of a release cycle is a great time to get involved in openSUSE development. See the How to Participate page on the openSUSE wiki for details.
See the full 11.1 roadmap on the openSUSE wiki for more details and updates.
Note that Coolo and Michl are on vacation until the end of next week, so let’s start the discussion on features once they are back on the opensuse-factory mailing list,
Andreas
Ever run system updates in Linux (i.e openSUSE) and get a package that doesn’t seem to be changed and wonder why the update was pushed? Or just interested in following the latest changes to some of your favorite Linux packages?
With rpm you can view all the latest changes in an easily to read format. To get the changelog of a package with rpm you do the following:
$ rpm -q --changelog <package> | less
replace <package> with whatever ever package you would like to see the changelog for (i.e rpm -q –changelog banshee-1 | less)
This is for rpm based Linux distributions (i.e openSUSE, Redhat)
The 2008 Utah Open Source Conference is coming up fast (August 28-30). We are going to continue to give you reasons to be very excited (as we are) to attend UTOSC 2008 until the very end.
We are very pleased to announce one of the keynote speakers at this year’s conference will be none other than Joe “Zonker” Brockmeir of Novell and the openSUSE project.
Joe’s keynote presentation, titled “How to bootstrap a community,” is sure to be interesting considering his background. What started with purchasing a copy of Slackware in 1996 turned into nearly a decade-long career writing about Linux and the open source community and industry for a variety of high-profile tech publications. Prior to being hired as openSUSE Community Manager for Novell early this year, Zonker spent time as Editor-In-Chief for Linux Magazine and as editorial director of Linux.com. His writing background also include contribution to many books, HOWTOs and other technical documents.
While his job at Novell is primarily centered around supporting and promoting the use of the openSUSE Linux distribution, Joe’s been quoted in a few recent interviews saying he’s committed to advocating the use of all forms of Linux and open source software.
Joe Brockmeier’s keynote presentation will undoubtably hold special value for users of the openSUSE and SUSE distributions, but considering Joe’s experience and knowledge about the Linux and open source industries over the last decade or so, this presentation offers great potential value for any UTOSC attendee.
A blurb about the conference
The 2008 Utah Open Source Conference is the second annual gathering of open source enthusiasts in Utah. Following the amazingly successful first conference held in 2007 at Novell’s Open Source Technology Center in Provo, UT, this year’s conference is being held on the Redwood campus of Salt Lake Community College near Salt Lake City.
For more information about this conference, to register to attend, or to see a really neat website driven by open source software, go over to <http://2008.utosc.com/>.
When you are working with the source of a new package on openSUSE and aren’t familiar with all of its dependencies, it gets quite annoying running the normal Linux autconf commands–./autogen.sh, install missing dependency, rinse, wash, and repeat–until you finally have everything you need installed.
zypper makes this easy for us with the following command:
$ sudo zypper si -d <package>
You replace <package> with whatever package’s build dependencies you need.
Its that time of month again where we crazy opensuse fans get together. So for those that don’t know where we meet,
its at the Applebee’s in Sandy, UT @ 7pm.
This month we are going to try and do something a little more than just hang out. We want to look at OBS a little and talk about improving banter and giver. All three of these are awesome projects. So, kudos to those that have put them together.
Many of you know, but for those that don’t I was hired back on as a full time employee. Its been about a month since I started as the build guy for the mono-a11y team. For those that don’t know what a11y is, its accessibility. The 11 referring to the 11 letters between the letters a and y. The wiki link belong explains a lot about the mono-a11y stuff, but quickly the stuff we are doing is making all winforms stuff accessibility on Linux. One of the advantages, I think, is that we are helping out in other a11y project and improving accessibility in general on Linux. So if you have problems with the mono a11y packages, you know who to complain to. Not a whole lot to say right now, but here are some links.
Mono:Accessibility - This is our main wiki ‘landing’ page
openSUSE:Accessibility - This is the new ‘landing’ page for openSUSE accessibility stuff
mono-a11y packages - For those of you that are feeling brave. Currently there isn’t the olive package and a small problem with on of the other packages, so give it a day or two for it to be fixed, I hope 
I’ve been having a lot of stability issues with openSUSE 11.0 lately and the majority of them boiled down to audio.
Here is a list of a few:
1. VLC required root to have audio, wtf?
2. Sound would crash after listening to any audio for an extended period of time (music, video, flash).
3. If my audio crashed, Firefox could not start up until I did rcalsasound restart
4. Some videos were slow/choppy.
So, you are probably asking, how did I fix all these issues?
zypper rm alsa-plugins-pulse
zypper addlock alsa-plugins-pulse
This removes the alsa plugin for pulse and locks it so it will never install again. Without the alsa plugin installed, the apps go back to using alsa directly. This has fixed every issue I’ve had with openSUSE 11.0 so far.
To all my OpenSuse friends:
In the past, I’ve made fun of your distro while you where not around.
I’ve poked fun at your package management.
I’ve installed over OpenSuse with other distros.
I’ve blown away partitions reserved for OpenSuse.
I’ve ignored your releases.
But today, that all changes. Today, I give it a fair shake.
I’ll let you know what I think in a week.
OpenSUSE 11 has some major new features. How cliche does that sound? Woo woo, look at my shiny new toy. We’ve all heard that with every release since the beginning of time. But could I just borrow your ear for a second (maybe an eyeball or two)? There have been some SPECTACULAR distribution releases this year, such as Ubuntu 8.04 and Fedora 9. The KDE desktop is developing quickly with the new KDE4 finally available.
What am I trying to say here? I could hardly stop smiling as I went through my new OpenSUSE 11.0 installation. Watch a kid’s face going on a DisneyLand ride for the first time. That was me as I was looking around in OpenSUSE 11.0. Truly biased words of a Linux zealot, you say. Come on, don’t rain on my parade. I’m telling you, you will LOVE this!
Make it interesting, and get to it, I hear you saying.
OK, time to play the “bullet list” card, then. Here is a list (not comprehensive) of the major features and upgrades available in OpenSUSE 11:
- The OpenSUSE installer is beautiful, just beautiful
- The installer is also a lot faster
- You install OpenSUSE from a LiveCD or DVD. This makes the experience so much nicer. Much more new-user friendly, especially.
- KDE 4 is the default for the DVD installer - see new eyecandy including Oxygen and Plasma (very slick)
- KDE 3.5 is still available, and even runs in parallel with KDE 4, if you wish
- Gnome 2.22 has some major improvements
- Even XFCE is offered
- Install them all and experience the joy
- How about wine!? From what I can see, 1.0rc3 will be included
- All sorts of compiz fusion developments. In addition to the cube, you can now do a cylinder and sphere
- The package management has taken several leaps forward. It is much, much (did I mention much?) faster
- YAST front-end improvements for usability (always a nice thing)
- zypper benefits from the package management performance, and has many upgrades of its own
- Ships with Firefox 3.0 beta 5
- OpenOffice 2.4 - apparently supports the MS Office 2007 docx format *backflips, please*
- NetworkManager - this version supports EV-DO and UMTS cards! Total coolness.
- Linux Kernel 2.6.25
- PackageKit - provides security updates and patches, resides in the system tray
- Tasque - interfaces with the Remember the Milk online service - sync your task list across multiple machines
- Almost all packages have version upgrades since 10.3
- More than 200 new features specific to OpenSUSE
As always, there are a bunch of installation repositories that you’ll want to at least be aware of. I have put together a script to add them to openSUSE 11.0 for you. Please do not just run the script. Go through and remove the ones you do not need. Do not add them all.
#!/bin/bash if [ "$EUID" != "0" ]; then echo "You must have root privileges to run this script!" exit 1 fi printf "################################################################################\n" printf "YAST INSTALLATION SOURCES SETUP SCRIPT FOR openSUSE 11.0\n" printf "by Scott Morris (2008-06-18)\n" printf "http://www.suseblog.com/\n\n" printf "You *MUST* be connected to the Internet for this script to work!\n\n" printf "################################################################################\n" rpm --import http://dev.computergmbh.de/844C4360.key rpm --import http://download.nvidia.com/novell/repodata/repomd.xml.key rpm --import http://packman.unixheads.com/suse/10.2/gpg-pubkey-1abd1afb.asc zypper ar http://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/11.0/ "NVidia" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.0/repo/non-oss/ "openSUSE Non-OSS" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.0/repo/oss/ "openSUSE OSS" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Apache/openSUSE_11.0/ "Apache" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Application:/Geo/openSUSE_11.0/ "Geo" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Banshee/openSUSE_11.0/ "Banshee" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/erlang/openSUSE_11.0/ "erlang" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/haskell/openSUSE_11.0/ "haskell" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/perl/openSUSE_11.0/ "perl" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/prolog/openSUSE_11.0/ "prolong" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/python/openSUSE_11.0/ "python" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/smalltalk/openSUSE_11.0/ "smalltalk" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/libraries:/c_c++/openSUSE_11.0/ "c - c++" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/tools:/building/openSUSE_11.0/ "building" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/tools:/gcc/openSUSE_11.0/ "gcc" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/tools/openSUSE_11.0/ "tools" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/tools:/scm/openSUSE_11.0/ "scm" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Education:/desktop/openSUSE_11.0/ "openSUSE BuildService Education - Desktop" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Education:/server/openSUSE_11.0/ "openSUSE BuildService Education - Server" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators/openSUSE_11.0/ "Emulators" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine/openSUSE_11.0/ "openSUSE BuildService - Wine" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/games/openSUSE_11.0/ "Games" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/GNOME:/Community/openSUSE_11.0/ "Gnome Community" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/GNOME:/STABLE/openSUSE_11.0/ "Gnome Stable" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/hamradio/openSUSE_11.0/ "ham radio" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Backports/openSUSE_11.0/ "KDE3 Backports" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Community/openSUSE_11.0 "KDE3 Community" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/KDE3/openSUSE_11.0/ "openSUSE BuildService - KDE3" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/KDE4:/STABLE:/Community/openSUSE_11.0/ "openSUSE BuildService - KDE 4 Community" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/KDE4:/STABLE:/Desktop/openSUSE_11.0/ "openSUSE BuildService - KDE 4 Desktop" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/KDE4:/STABLE:/Extra-Apps/openSUSE_11.0/ "openSUSE BuildService - KDE 4 Extra-Apps" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Mono:/Community/openSUSE_11.0/ "Mono Community" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Mono:/Community/openSUSE_11.0+Mono/ "Mono Community+" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Mono/openSUSE_11.0/ "Mono" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/mozilla/openSUSE_11.0/ "Mozilla" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/multimedia:/audio/openSUSE_11.0/ "Audio" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/multimedia:/photo/openSUSE_11.0/ "Photo" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/net-snmp/openSUSE_11.0/ "net-snmp" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Novell:/NTS/openSUSE_11.0/ "Novell NTS" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/NX/openSUSE_11.0/ "NX" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/OpenOffice.org:/EXTRAS/openSUSE_11.0/ "OpenOffice.org Extras" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/OpenOffice.org:/STABLE/openSUSE_11.0/ "OpenOffice" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/OpenSync:/OpenSync-0.3x/openSUSE_11.0/ "OpenSync" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/qfix/openSUSE_11.0/ "qfix" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/science/openSUSE_11.0/ "science" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/server:/database:/postgresql/openSUSE_11.0/ "Postgres" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/server:/php:/applications/openSUSE_11.0/ "PHP Applications" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/server:/php:/extensions/openSUSE_11.0/ "PHP Extensions" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Subversion/openSUSE_11.0/ "subversion" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/swamp/openSUSE_11.0/ "swamp" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/telepathy/openSUSE_11.0/ "Telepathy" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/vdr/openSUSE_11.0/ "vdr" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/xfce/openSUSE_11.0/ "XFCE" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/XGL/openSUSE_11.0/ "XGL" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/XOrg/openSUSE_11.0/ "openSUSE BuildService - XOrg & Compiz Fusion" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/XML/openSUSE_11.0/ "XML" zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/update/11.0/ "Update" zypper ar http://download.videolan.org/pub/vlc/SuSE/11.0 "VideoLAN" zypper ar http://ftp5.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser-jengelh/SUSE-11.0/ "suser-j.engelh" zypper ar http://madwifi.org/suse/11.0/ "Madwifi" zypper ar http://packman.unixheads.com/suse/11.0/ "Packman" yes | zypper ref printf "\nThe script has now finished. Congratulations\n"
There’s the script for ya’ll who copy and paste. Don’t forget to “chmod +x” it. If the copy and paste thing doesn’t work for you, download and use the script from the link above.
These install sources will not refresh automatically. To turn that feature on, you’ll have to do it manually in YAST.
Sometimes, you want the very latest bleeding-edge version of a package. YAST may not find the version you seek. Even with the above repositories added. You may find it, however, in the openSUSE Build Service. Go to that page, search for the package you need, click the 1-click install button next to the version you would like installed. For example, using the software repositories listed above, the most recent version of pidgin that I see is 2.4.2-4.1. However, using the Build Service, I found one that is version 2.4.2-10.4.
For different methods of installing software in openSUSE 11.0, check out an article I wrote about a week ago, called How many ways can you install an RPM in OpenSUSE Linux?
Product Highlights of openSUSE 11.0 - gives a general description of some of the main package updates
Sneak Peeks at openSUSE 11.0 - a series of interviews and insights revolving around changes and improvements in openSUSE 11.0
Guide to openSUSE 11.0 - A general description of improvements in openSUSE 11.0
openSUSE 11.0 Screenshots - you cannot miss these gorgeous screenshots
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/18/open_suse_11_review/ - a third-party review of openSUSE 11.0
changes in zypper in openSUSE 11.0
Things to do after installing openSUSE 11.0 - how to pimp out your new installation. Skip the “Setting up repositories” part if you’ve used my script to set them up for you.
openSUSE Forums - if you should get stuck with anything, start here
openSUSE 11.0 Package List - the entire package list for openSUSE 11.0
There are loads of improvements with OpenSUSE 11.0. The package management is unbelievably fast. They have done a great job with the new algorithms that make it absolutely fly. The new Oxygen icon theme and the Plasma desktop shell catch the eye and are sure to impress. Things are much easier to use than they have ever been before. It’s the perfect time to download an image and give it a whirl. With this release, it is no longer possible to say that Linux is hard to use. If you are using Windows, especially XP, you are about to get the boot from Microsoft. Why not take a look at a nicely-polished, well-done Linux distribution?
For the apprehensive, I have a free “Intro to Linux Course” on my OpenSUSE Linux Blog on the left side.
If you want the Addon CD, Gnome LiveCD, KDE LiveCD, or the network install CD, you can get those for i386, x86_64, and ppc from here: openSUSE 11.0 CD ISOs. PLEASE use mirrors where possible!
Deltas for all of the above plus the DVD images for i386, x86_64, and ppc are available from here: openSUSE 11.0 deltas. PLEASE use mirrors where possible!
Looking for the DVD ISOs for the i386, x86_64, and ppc architectures? Get those here: openSUSE 11.0 DVD ISOs. PLEASE use mirrors where possible!
Torrents for the CD and DVD images are also available here: openSUSE 11.0 torrents.
Package management in OpenSUSE in recent years has had its share of challenges. In OpenSUSE 10.1, the package management was an epic trainwreck. Package management in OpenSUSE 10.3 is as good as that was bad. There are various types of speed improvements. Some of them huge. There is some caching of the repository package info. Progress bars so the user knows what’s going on. All sorts of goodness.
But I wanted to see how many ways I could install a package on OpenSUSE 10.3 (and 11.0, for that matter) without any help from any third-party package management tools that don’t come stock on a fresh OpenSUSE install. Like no apt, yum, smart, etc. Just using the package management tools that come on the fresh install, how many ways can one install a package? There’s a method to this madness, too. You never know under what circumstances you’ll have what access to the machine you’re working on, especially if it is remote. One of the mantras of Linux pros is that there is four billion ways to skin a cat. OK, so I made that up. It’s good to know many ways of doing the same thing, though.
Especially if we want to automate something. If we do it one way, maybe it requires human interaction. If we do it a different way, no human interaction is required, and thus, we can automate that process.
OK, without any more excessive yammer, let’s take a look, shall we?
1. Use YAST - Let’s get the obvious one out of the way. Click on the YAST icon, put in your root password. In the window that appears, select SOFTWARE from the left, and SOFTWARE MANAGEMENT on the right. At some point, the YAST Package Management window appears. Search for the desired package, click ACCEPT. Approve any additional necessary packages. YAST installs everything, and asks if you want to install or remove more packages. Say no, and you’re done.
This is the classic way to install packages in OpenSUSE using YAST. One benefit is that it does a good job of resolving dependencies for you. One possible drawback is that it reauires all kinds of human interaction. So there’s our first way.
2. Use zypper - This is a powerful command-line tool used in OpenSUSE much in the same way we might use something like apt-get. To see all the ways you can use this tool, run zypper –help from a command line:
[2318][root@linux:/]$ zypper --help
Options:
--help, -h Help.
--version, -V Output the version number.
--quiet, -q Suppress normal output, print only error messages.
--verbose, -v Increase verbosity.
--terse, -t Terse output for machine consumption.
--table-style, -s Table style (integer).
--rug-compatible, -r Turn on rug compatibility.
--non-interactive, -n Don't ask anything, use default answers automatically.
--no-gpg-checks Ignore GPG check failures and continue.
--root, -R <dir> Operate on a different root directory.
Commands:
help, ? Help
shell, sh Accept multiple commands at once
install, in Install packages or resolvables
remove, rm Remove packages or resolvables
search, se Search for packages matching a pattern
repos, lr List all defined repositories.
addrepo, ar Add a new repository
removerepo, rr Remove specified repository
renamerepo, nr Rename specified repository
modifyrepo, mr Modify specified repository
refresh, ref Refresh all repositories
patch-check, pchk Check for patches
patches, pch List patches
list-updates, lu List updates
xml-updates, xu List updates and patches in xml format
update, up Update installed resolvables with newer versions.
info, if Show full information for packages
patch-info Show full information for patches
source-install, si Install a source package
[2319][root@linux:/]$
To install a package from the command line using zypper, you’ll do that this way:
[2321][root@linux:/]$ zypper install bzflag * Reading repository 'openSUSE-10.3-Updates' cache * Reading repository 'openSUSE-10.3-OSS-KDE 10.3' cache * Reading repository 'Jpackage' cache * Reading repository 'Main Repository (NON-OSS)' cache * Reading repository 'Eric Lavar - Germany' cache * Reading repository 'Main Repository (OSS)' cache * Reading installed packages [100%] The following NEW package is going to be installed: bzflag Overall download size: 10.8 M. After the operation, additional 15.0 M will be used. Continue? [yes/no]: yes Downloading package bzflag-2.0.8-78.x86_64, 10.8 M (15.0 M unpacked) Downloading: media * Downloading [100%] Downloading: bzflag-2.0.8-78.x86_64.rpm * Downloading [100%] * Installing: bzflag-2.0.8-78 [100%] [2323][root@linux:/]$
It resolves all dependencies, and installs everything it needs. Great way to do things without so much human interaction. There are even flags that will allow us to omit human interaction entirely (–non-interactive and –no-gpg-checks). Very nice.
3. Use the rpm command - Every once in awhile, there is a package that YAST cannot find in the available repositories. When this happens, I head over to one of three places: rpmseek.com, Rpmfind, or pbone.net. In almost every case, I can find an RPM that was built for whatever version of OpenSUSE that I am using on that particular box. I just download the RPM in question, and install it with the rpm command. Many people suggest doing this in the following manner:
[2215][scott@linux:~]$ rpm -Uvh [full path to RPM here]
This is one of the possibly more difficult ways to install an RPM. Not because it’s a difficult command, but because it doesn’t resolve dependencies. If there are dependencies, you get to resolve those babies yourself. It’s possible, but I would definitely prefer a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
4. 1-Click Install - Tell you what, one of the coolest things that OpenSUSE has come up with thus far is the 1-Click Install. At first, I thought it was an April Fool’s Joke. But realizing it wasn’t April, I decided to give it a try. To see how cool this is, head over to the OpenSUSE Build Service. Search for a package like kopete. Scroll through the results. When you find the one you want to install, click on the “1-Click Install” button off to the right side. You’ll have to verify some things and provide your root password, but other than that, it is virtually hands-off installation of the package. Hands-down easiest way to install packages in OpenSUSE.
5. Install with YAST from custom installation repository - Sometimes, you will have an rpm that you want installed, but cannot find it in YAST. You can download it and try to install it with rpm. The problem is that it has 12 dependencies. What then? Switch distributions to something more sensible? No way, we’ll just take the easy way out. Create our own repository and point YAST to that. This process is very simple.
Install the createrepo package. Then, create a directory to be used as the repository. Dump the RPM in there. Then, run the createrepo command on that directory. For example, make a directory called /my_inst_src. Throw your RPM (as hard as you can) into that folder. Then, create the repository with this command:
[2246][root@linux:/home/scott]$ createrepo /my_inst_src 1/1 - pidgin-2.4.2-5.1.i586.rpm Saving Primary metadata Saving file lists metadata Saving other metadata [2247][root@linux:/home/scott]$
Then, just add that directory as an installation source in YAST=>SOFTWARE=>SOFTWARE REPOSITORIES.
Finally, go into YAST=>SOFTWARE=>SOFTWARE MANAGEMENT and search for the RPM you placed into your new repository. You should be able to find and install it easily. The great part here is that YAST should be able to resolve the package dependencies.
Yes, there are a few steps involved here. However, you can take this concept and apply it to an entire network of desktop or server machines. Pick a repository server on your network and create your own repository on it. Then, export that repo via NFS to the rest of the network. Next, just add that repository to the other machines on the network. The great part is that you only have to add the repository to each of the other machines once. But then, instant access to install that package on any of those boxes. This particular solution has been very helpful for me on several occasions.
6. Install with zypper from custom installation repository - Same thing as the previous method. We download a stand-alone RPM that has many dependencies. So the approach will be similar. Install createrepo, make a repository directory, and put your RPM in there. Use createrepo to build your repository as demonstrated above.
Then, instead of YAST, go ahead and add your new repository using the zypper command, like so:
[2308][root@linux:/home/scott]$ zypper addrepo /my_inst_src "My Installation Source" * Adding repository 'My Installation Source' Repository 'My Installation Source' successfully added: Enabled: Yes Autorefresh: Yes URL: dir:///my_inst_src [2309][root@linux:/home/scott]$
Make sure it was installed properly, again using zypper:
[2258][root@linux:/home/scott]$ zypper repos # | Enabled | Refresh | Type | Alias | Name --+---------+---------+--------+-------------------------------------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Yes | Yes | rpm-md | openSUSE-10.3-Updates | openSUSE-10.3-Updates 2 | Yes | No | yast2 | openSUSE-10.3-OSS-KDE 10.3 | openSUSE-10.3-OSS-KDE 10.3 3 | No | Yes | NONE | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/10.3/repo/debug/ | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/10.3/repo/debug/ 4 | Yes | Yes | rpm-md | Jpackage | Jpackage 5 | Yes | Yes | yast2 | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/10.3/repo/non-oss/ | Main Repository (NON-OSS) 6 | Yes | Yes | rpm-md | Eric_Lavar_-_Germany | Eric Lavar - Germany 7 | Yes | Yes | rpm-md | My Installation Source | My Installation Source 8 | Yes | Yes | yast2 | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:10.3/standard/ | Main Repository (OSS) [2259][root@linux:/home/scott]$
There it is, highlighted in red. Rock on, now we can make sure zypper finds our new package, thusly:
[2309][root@linux:/home/scott]$ zypper search pidgin Refreshing 'My Installation Source' repomd.xml is unsigned, continue? [yes/no]: yes * Building repository 'My Installation Source' cache * Reading installed packages [100%] S | Repository | Type | Name | Version | Arch --+-------------------------------------------------------------------+---------+------------------------+------------+------- | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:10.3/standard/ | package | pidgin | 2.1.1-13 | i586 i | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:10.3/standard/ | package | pidgin | 2.1.1-13 | x86_64 v | My Installation Source | package | pidgin | 2.4.2-10.1 | x86_64 | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:10.3/standard/ | package | pidgin-bot-sentry | 1.1.0-45 | i586 | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:10.3/standard/ | package | pidgin-bot-sentry | 1.1.0-45 | x86_64 | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:10.3/standard/ | package | pidgin-bot-sentry-lang | 1.1.0-45 | i586 | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:10.3