March 2004 - openSUSE Users - openSUSE Mailing Lists

Re: [SLE] Time synch problem
by Carlos E. R. 23 Feb '05

23 Feb '05

El 2003-07-09 a las 13:37, C Hamel escribió: (You forgot to post to the list) > I am afraid I don't even know how to ask a question, at this point, but I'll > make an attempt: Exactly where should this ntp thing be called to set the > clock ...or(/and) by what process? It is a very proper question :-) Well, it depends. There are two ways. If your computer is up all the time, and has a permanent network connection, you can use the ntpd daemon, which polls a set of servers about once a minute, and _very_ slowly adjusts the system clock; it can even note the systematic error or drift, and take that in to account to discipline the system clock. There are many options available for the daemon: see full doc in: http://localhost/usr/share/doc/packages/xntp-doc/html/index.htm Or, you may have a temporary network connection, like I do; I will explain this in some detail. We can adjust the clock to "internet" time, once, sometime after we connect to internet. This, apparently, can be done with the daemon, using some option I don't fully understand. Or we can use ntpdate - a program which is to disappear some time in the future, but that I use, and SuSE uses as well in its own script. For this, we can simply call "/etc/init.d/xntpd ntptimeset" - and assume that when "ntpdate" finally disappears SuSE will adjust the script appropriately ;-) Of course, /etc/ntp.conf has to be configured; at least, it must have a list of servers: server IP_address server name_address This is sufficient for "xntpd ntptimeset" to work; just leave the rest of the config at the default values. If you want to use the daemon, then I'm not the person to ask :-) Ok, so when is the appropriate time to make this time adjust? Well, ideally, during system boot-up, after network connection is established. This is done properly by the service xntpd, if enabled. The SuSE script "/etc/init.d/xntpd start" does first a clock set using ntpdate, if the variable XNTPD_INITIAL_NTPDATE is set to "AUTO". Then, it starts the daemon to keep time synchronized. And, if our network connection is not permanent? Then, the script "/etc/ppp/poll.tcpip", which is called from "/etc/ppp/ip-up", will adjust the clock first thing: assuming we have some servers configured, it will be done every time we connect to internet with the modem. I do it differently, only once every five times, and I also update the hwclock. The danger of this method is that the clock might suddenly go forward or backward a bit (seconds or hours, it depends): not very nice on a *nix system, but we can not avoid it. More details to be aware of: what happens to the hardware or CMOS clock? Well, the script "/etc/init.d/boot.clock" (read it, it is documented) does this sequence of things (using the command "hwclock") before starting system services: - Create if it doesn't exist, the file "/etc/adjtime" - Adjust hardware clock (CMOS) for known drift during the time the computer has been off; this depends on the previous file to work. - Copy CMOS clock (hardware) to system time (CPU and OS maintained). After this, the system goes fully up, and maybe, the clock is adjusted from the internet or by hand (danger!). But (and this is very different than windows) the CPU maintained clock has to be copied back to the CMOS, because the kernel doesn't do it. SuSE does it in the script "/etc/init.d/halt" that copies system time to hardware time just before power off. Me, I prefer to do it just after I adjust to network time, inside "ip-up.local", like this: /usr/sbin/rcxntpd ntptimeset /sbin/hwclock --systohc More things to be aware of: a common mistake is manually adjusting the system clock from kde control center (for example), and not updating the hwclock at the same time: the drift adjust algorithm of hwclock thinks that the CMOS clock is fast or slow by the same amount you adjusted the clock, and the next boot it will adjust the time by several hours... The solution is to delete "/etc/adjtime" and call "/sbin/hwclock --systohc" just then (documented on the SuSE sdb). Well, this has been enough chatter on my part; let's hope I didn't make many mistakes :-) -- Saludos Carlos Robinson

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How to add secondary IP address to a SuSE box?
by joe_pr＠myrealbox.com 16 Sep '04

16 Sep '04

Hello, I am converting one of our Domino servers fro NT4 to SuSE 8.2. Is there any way to add a secondary IP to the network card? I used to have such a setup for the current NT box and eve tried this config with Mandrake but thi sdoes not seem to be possible with YAST2. Any idea anybody? Thanks Josef Prusa

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[SLE] LILO - files
by sander.van.vugt＠azlan.nl 06 Sep '04

06 Sep '04

Hi, I'dd like to know what the following files in the directory /boot are about. Can anyone give me a clue or point me to some documentation? - boot.b - chain.b - map - System.map-2.2.14 - chos.* Thanks in advance, Sander ********************************************************************** Disclaimer This email is confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual to whom it is adressed. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do do not necessarily represent those of the Azlan Holdings bv and/or subsidairy. If you are not the intended recipient, be advised that you have received this email in error and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing or copying of this email is strictly prohibited If you have received this email in error please notify Azlan Holdings MIS Helpdesk by telephone on +31 (0) 79 3443200. ********************************************************************* -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe(a)suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help(a)suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq

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9.1 unuseably slow
by David Bottrill 02 Sep '04

02 Sep '04

We received a copy of 9.1 today at work and I have installed this on three machines with dissapointing results. The first machine was an IBM Thinkpad R40 with a Centino 1600 CPU. This machine worked fine and the performance was great. The second and third machines were unusable, KDE takes serveral minutes to start, attempting to start YAST for instance will take about a minute for the SU box to appear and then another minute for YAST to load. I get similar results for all applications I have tried, in all instances the system performs like a P100 with very little RAM. The machines that run slowly are both Athlon XP based machines, one being an Athlon XP 2400 with 1GB of DDR RAM on an ECS Elite motherboard. The second machine is an XP2000 with 512MB of PC3200 RAM on a PCChips motherboard. I have applied all the updates with no effect. Any ideas would be appreciated, I've had to switch back to 9.0 as the whole 9.1 experience is unuseable has anybody got any ideas? David -- David Bottrill Registered Linux user number 330730 www.bottrill.org Internet SIP Phone: 1-747-244-2699

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Partition Magic vs. Linux partitioner
by Paul W. Abrahams 17 Aug '04

17 Aug '04

I have a hard drive that works perfectly well under Linux but Partition Magic thinks it's incorrectly formatted. I've heard that there's some disagreement between PowerQuest (the company that wrote PM) and the Linux world over what the correct format of a partition table is; each thinks the other has it wrong. Does anyone on this list know about the disagreement and the best way to get around it? (The SuSE database yields nothing.) Paul Abrahams

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DVD playback...
by Matthew 14 May '04

14 May '04

Good day, Yes there are legal reasons why SuSE cannot have DVD playback of those pesky movies, but what be done? Would it be too expensive for Novell/SuSE to license a codec? Seems like there is a new copyright law in Germany that has made PackMan be more cautious. No one has made a player for Linux that is 100% legal, is it due to expense? Matt

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3D Acceleration for Radeon 9200 in SUSE 9.0 Professional
by Carlos Sia 28 Apr '04

28 Apr '04

Hi all! I am wondering how to get 3D support for my Radeon 9200. This has been a source of endless frustration for me. I once had to repartition and reinstall SUSE 9.0 because of the following symptoms I got after changing ANY setting in SaX: there would be no monitor output (no picture on my monitor, but Linux is running - you can tell because of the HDD activity light) when the system reaches runlevel 5 (full GUI, X server started). The system would boot to failsafe/console only but would give the same symptom when the command startx was executed. This seems to be the problem with Mandrake 9.1, which I have tried on my machine a few months ago - the installation runs fine, but when the X server is started, the monitor output goes bye-bye. It put me off Linux for a while - we had thought it a graphics card/monitor issue. I was pleasantly surprised when SUSE detected my hardware, but was disappointed to find that I had no 3D and was on 16-bit colour (the default settings which I am still using now). I have installed the fglrx driver rpm, and SaX ticked the checkbox marked "3D support", but executing the command glxinfo | head gives the following results: - Xlib: extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":0.0". name of display: :0.0 display: :0 screen: 0 direct rendering: No server glx vendor string: SGI server glx version string: 1.2 server glx extensions: GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_EXT_import_context client glx vendor string: SGI client glx version string: 1.2 client glx extensions: - Obviously, 3D has not been enabled. Also, the ATi control panel (fireglcontrol) does not operate completely; it says the X11 extensions are missing. For your reference, my graphics hardware setup is: - Sapphire Technologies Atlantis ATI Radeon 9200 (128MB DDR frame buffer, AGP 8x, VGA/TV-out/DVI) - Samsung SyncMaster 152T TFT-LCD connected via DVI SUSE detected this as: - RV280 5961 (fglrx) - Samsung SyncMaster 4S - 3D acceleration enabled Is there a way to get 3D support for my hardware? How do I get my Syncmaster 152T identified correctly? Am I better off buying an NVidia GeForce FX 5700 instead? Please help because, among other things, I can't play 3D games and the desktop lags when dragging windows around. :( Cheers, Carl

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SuSE 9 and icons-xpm rpm
by Dominik Epple 25 Apr '04

25 Apr '04

Hi, where has the icons-xpm rpm gone in SuSE 9? Apparently it existed until SuSE 8.2 as icons-xpm-101.0-707.noarch.rpm. Running fvwm2 on SuSE 9 without this package gives buttons with text labels instead of buttons with icons. We are currently preparing to upgrade our cluster from an older version of SuSE Linux to SuSE Linux 9.0 and a primary goal (and reason to stick with SuSE) is to have as few changes in the user environment as possible. Having same-looking fvwm2 configs is part of this. So these icons are somewhat important for us. Of course it works installing just the RPM from SuSE 8.2, but is that the 'canonical' solution? Where has this RPM gone in SuSE 9? Is this just a bug in SuSE 9? Or am I just to stupid to find it? Or has it been removed on purpose? Thanks, Dominik. --

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ntp drift file error..
by Anders Norrbring 20 Apr '04

20 Apr '04

Hiya! I run SuSE Pro 9.0, all ntp default settings. In the ntp log, I constantly see this: 26 Mar 08:46:30 ntpd[12441]: can't open /var/lib/ntp/drift/ntp.drift.TEMP: No such file or directory I've tried to touch files named ntp.drift and ntp.drift.TEMP, changed ownership on them to ntp:nogroup with -rw-r--r-- rights, still the same message. Can someone please help me out here? Anders.

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Is KDE 3.2 ready for prime time?
by Paul W. Abrahams 17 Apr '04

17 Apr '04

I just noticed a couple more posts (the ones about gaim and kbear) that suggest people are having a lot of trouble with KDE 3.2. For myself, it still is giving me big problems, most noticeably the fact that the desktops don't show up on the panel (the bar across the bottom of the screen). And my attempts to install it by several methods have been only partly successful. The problems have included but not been limited to dependency failures that I have few clues for resolving. If someone asked me at this point if they should install KDE 3.2, I'd say no. Whatever improvements it may provide are not worth the hassle of the installation problems. Unless you're one of those folks that likes living on the bleeding edge, of course. Paul Abrahams

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