November 2008 - openSUSE Users - openSUSE Mailing Lists

Re: [opensuse] Of software RAID on SUSE Linux
by Tero Pesonen 02 Dec '08

02 Dec '08

On Sunday 30 November 2008, you wrote: > On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 5:50 PM, Tero Pesonen <mlist-suse(a)tpesonen.net> wrote: > > Of course, a RAID won't help > > against other kinds of data loss, such as the power supply's > > failing and killing other components with some mighty spike; or > > from fire, or flood, or what ever. That is OK. That's why I backup. > > Are you using a UPS? I've never used a UPS device before for a desktop at home. I've been thinking of acquiring one for the new system -- the one with the RAID -- so as to avoid problems in case of a black-out. I've read that this is recommended with RAIDs as the disks need to keep in sync and no-one knows what'll happen when they all power down unexpectedly. So having the system go down gracefully is preferred. I have not yet looked at products or prices. But if I had a UPS for my home box, and the power went out, and the UPS went to work for a short period of time, how would my system know to "init 0" or something like that during the time the UPS would be able to feed it? Do you have one, and if so, how does your setup work? > > In other words, may I combine disks from > > different manufacturers, with different specs, etc. without > > affecting the RAID somehow negatively? > > It is OK to mix manufacturers and capacities. It is good to mix discs > with different manufacture dates. This makes it less likely that the > discs will fail at the same time. But I would not mix buses, spindle > speed or cache size because I would not want to thrash one disc while > leaving the other one idle. OK. > So, while you can mix discs, I bought an identical pair of hard discs > for my RAID 1. Using a pair of identical discs takes the guesswork > out of building a RAID. And I am satisfied with the result. I guess two might suffice for me, too. Two identical Seagate ES.2 SATA's might work. They're specsed by the manufacturer for 24h use, for whatever that is worth (I always run my desktop 24h/d, and keep KDE up for months at time... so the disks spin a good deal. This is mostly because the OS-disks cannot be spinned down with hdparm for more than a few seconds due to the kernel's constantly flushing them. So, at night they are merely idling away at 7200rpm.) I prefer not to turn the power on and off too much, as doing so seems the most efficient way for killing modern-day crappy PC components. Keeping the thing running seems to provide the most stable system. I've only experienced one power cut on my home box over the past 10 years. Luckily, that did not cause any fs errors, and reiserfs recovered from it with a boot-time fsck (that did quite a bit of work, though) without leaving any problems even though the disk had been writing when the power was cut. > > On the other hand, replacing disks later with larger capacity ones > > will cause no problem as they only need to meet the minimum size > > criterion. Hence, I could replace them one-by-one such that each > > new disk, replacing a removed old one, is first let to fully > > integrate/reconstruct; finally, after all disk have been replaced, > > I could enlarge a partition or two, for example, as allowed by the > > new shared minimum, thus increasing the capacity of the virtual > > device that is being RAIDed. > > Remember to back up before experimenting. Of course. Thanks to my rigorous habit of backing-up, despite hard drive failures, I have never really lost any important data. > You might want to look at using LVM rather than expanding partitions. I'll do that. Thanks for the tip! > My System > > I have a three disc system. I have one disc for the OS. And I have a > matched pair of Seagates in a RAID 1. The OS disc is a throwaway > disc. In other words, if something happens to it, I can just buy a > new disc, build a new install of openSuSE and be on my way. I have no > personal data on that disc. All of my data is on the RAID 1. And I > have a separate mount point for my stuff that does not overlap with > any standard Linux mount point such as /home or whatever. So the > biggest risks to my data are a double hardware failure or operator > error. That seems like a good strategy. I will have to consider that kind of approach too. > I also have a removable hard drive with the same capacity as my RAID > that I use for backing up. > > Mike Thanks for your comments! Tero Pesonen -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] SUSE 11.0 YAST2 SCANNER INSTALL LOCKS UP
by Michael Redican 02 Dec '08

02 Dec '08

Opensuse Suse 11.0 installed on 32 bit AMD motherboard, a printer has been installed and is working correctly. However when I attempted to use the scanner installation icon in YAST2 the window opens displaying what appears to be my scanners chip set, if I now select edit or add the YAST2 scanner window locks up and has to be terminated as though it can't find the scanner database. When I look in this path...... /var/lib/YaST2> I see -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 541719 2008-11-19 18:34 scanner_database.ycp This would appear to be the scanner database, in it I can see my scanner model..... "manufacturer":"Canon", "model":"CanoScan N650U/N656U", "firmware":"", "interface":"USB", "usbid":"0x04a9:0x2206", "status":"complete", "comment":"" Can someone please advise on how I can resolve this problem yours Michael Redican -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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Re: [opensuse] KDE4 strange things...
by Rajko M. 02 Dec '08

02 Dec '08

On Friday 28 November 2008 01:52:24 am István Németh wrote: > 2008/11/27 Rajko M. <rmatov101(a)charter.net>: > > On Thursday 27 November 2008 05:02:27 am István Németh wrote: > >> Hi All! > >> I try to use KDE4 with openSuSE 11.0 on my laptop, what is an older > >> Acer TravelMate. Some of the KDE4 applications not start, or freeze. > >> My settings disapperaring after restart, and any kind of "strange > >> things" happened. > >> My laptop hasn't separate VGA, but all the compiz effects works on it. > >> Maybe some compatibility problem? > > > > István, > > > > Please post: > > graphic adapter: ? > > used driver for that adapter: ? > > repository used for KDE4: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/ ... > Hello! > Sorry, I forgot the config! > Linux 2.6.25.18-0.2-default i686 > Graphic adapter: Intel 855GM onboard > used driver: Intel with 3D support > I didn't make any changes with the drivers, all is the default installed. > Before weeks I tried the GNOME 2.22, and the compiz and settings are > works good with it. > Thanks! > István Obviously wrong button, as your reply hit my mailbox only. I added opensuse(a)opensuse.org as CC. Most likely it is KDE4, but it could be something with the driver for Intel graphic adapter. First disable desktop effects in KDE4 personal settings and see if that helps. Post what repository you use to update KDE4. You are using 11.0 with latest kernel update. I can't find any "Intel 855GM" bugs for 11.0, but in 11.1 there is: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=439070 This can be related as 11.0 can have some backported features. Check for Mesa updates if you see problem described in above bug. See also: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=440048 Here: KDE4 is not running specially fast with Nvidia MX 4000 graphic adapter, while KDE3 has no speed problems, but KDE3 Konsole font rendering is messed. That is bug in Nvidia driver, that will be removed with next driver release. -- Regards, Rajko -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] nspluginviewer/KDE crash handler nag
by Diego Tognola 02 Dec '08

02 Dec '08

Hi all, Just wondering if this is a known issue with nspluginviewer or something happening in my own little world only: If I view websites with flash content in Konqueror, I get one or more error prompts from KDE crash handler telling me that the application unknown (nspluginviewer) crashed because of a signal 11 (SIGSERV). As the backtrace seem to be of no use either, I do wonder if: 1.) is there a fix ? 2.) is there a way to disable the KDE crash handler instead ? To reproduce: start a new Konqueror, navigate to either http://www.geekgirl.com.au/blog/ http://www.theage.com.au/ and wait a minute. It's not occurring 100% of the time, but close to it. openSUSE 11.0 (32-bit), KDE 3.5.9 (49.1) Cheers, Diego P.S.: I know flash works in Firefox and am using it if I am actually interested in the flash content. But most of the time, the crashing flash content is only advertisement, so the accidental filtering is rather useful, in a funny twist of fate, haha. -- http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] connect/disconnect
by John/Pat Heinen 02 Dec '08

02 Dec '08

I had that little symbol "electrical plug" on the bottom of the screen, indicating whether I was connected or not. It diappeared, probably my doing, how do I get it back to get connected? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] .bashrc alias - One Liner Problem?
by David C. Rankin 02 Dec '08

02 Dec '08

Listmates, Usually I can make my 1-liner aliases work the way I want. However, I'm stumped by a simple webpin alias and its refusal to do what I think I'm telling it to do. Generally, I just use: alias wp='webpin $1' But I wanted to have it give usage information if no argument was given instead of just the default webpin "ERROR: you must specify the search criteria as a parameter" if no search term was specified. The simple logic I wanted was and that works fine in a separate script is: if [[ $1 ]]; then webpin $1 else echo -e "\n\tusage: wp <filename>\n" exit 1 fi However, when I try and turn it into a 1-liner I get the expected results for the echo statement, but I get the following error when webpin $1 is called: alias wp='if [[ $1 ]]; then webpin $1; else echo -e "\n\tusage: wp <filename>\n"; fi' 13:45 nirvana~/linux/scripts/test> wp usage: wp <filename> 13:49 nirvana~/linux/scripts/test> wp konqueror -bash: syntax error near unexpected token `konqueror' I look on both sides of the $1 in "webpin $1;" and I can't see any thing wrong. To get around this, I have tried various connotations of || and && logic, but I can't get either an exclusive execution of webpin or the usage statement, such as: alias wp='[[ $1 ]] && webpin $1 || echo -e "\n\tusage: wp <filename>\n"' Which works from the command line, but not as an alias. So my question is "what basic bash rule am I screwing up this time, and, how do I fix it?" Thanks. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. | openSoftware und SystemEntwicklung Rankin Law Firm, PLLC | Countdown for openSuSE 11.1 www.rankinlawfirm.com | http://counter.opensuse.org/11.1/small -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] downloading
by John/Pat Heinen 02 Dec '08

02 Dec '08

What do I have to do after I download, say thuntherbird, I find two incons on the desktop with a lot of files in each, what is the next step to get the program going.? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] Results of moving ssh to a high port - Zero script kiddies in a 24 hour period.
by David C. Rankin 01 Dec '08

01 Dec '08

Listmates, Moving ssh to a high port has been a resounding success at completely eliminating the dictionary attacks against my server. And so far, I have not had one single instance since making the change. I don't have any great statistics, but I do have one that shows the impact very clearly. The number of log entries per 24 hour period before and after. Before the change (November 21) I had over 5000 ssh attempts on port 22. There were periods where there were multiple attempts every second: 16:36 nirvana~/linux/boxes/bonza/log> wc -l < 20081121.log 5353 After the change: 16:37 nirvana~/linux/boxes/bonza/log> wc -l < 20081125.log 294 Less than 300 entries in the logs in _total_ for an entire 24 hour period. If you have similar issues, and your real user needs can be accommodated on a high port, I highly recommend it. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. | openSoftware und SystemEntwicklung Rankin Law Firm, PLLC | Countdown for openSuSE 11.1 www.rankinlawfirm.com | http://counter.opensuse.org/11.1/small -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] bug in nut-2.2.2-66.1.src.rpm and built rpms - no /etc/init.d/upsd
by David C. Rankin 01 Dec '08

01 Dec '08

Stanislav, I was using the nut rpms from http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/sbrabec:/backports/openSUSE… and I noticed an apparent bug with the rpms and .src.rpm. When you install nut, your current /etc/init.d/upsd script is deleted and the new rpms do not provide a new one. I tried building from your .src.rpm with the same results. It looks like the spec file doesn't generate the required /etc/init.d/upsd script. If you could tell me how to include this, I could try editing the spec file for the copy I downloaded and test it. Thanks. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. | openSoftware und SystemEntwicklung Rankin Law Firm, PLLC | Countdown for openSuSE 11.1 www.rankinlawfirm.com | http://counter.opensuse.org/11.1/small -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] An empty desktop with a little and floating windows with my desktop inside
by ivo.linux 01 Dec '08

01 Dec '08

well I know that this post could sound strange or stupid but it exactly describe my problem I starting my PC today and I found without any reason an empty top except for one dash with inside my desk folder, follow a snapshot (it is fun)...... http://picasaweb.google.com/giov.martin/UABSTOSUnAltroBlogSuScienzaTecnlogi… well I know that in substance it is not a really functional problem however it is horrible! Any ideas will be appreciate thanks in advance -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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