SuSE / Novell Patch System on 9.3
Introduction: I have been a Linux user since 1996 and I have used numerous distros starting with Slackware way back in 96'. Back then I was in high school and had plenty of time to just tinker around. Now a days I just try to cut down to the meat of what I want to do (which is not tinkering around for days on end trying to get basic function) and have a system that is for the most part self configuring and managing. Meat: I installed SuSE 9.3 multiple times on my test box. I did some reviewing of my failed installs and I found if I didn't patch the system it would come up though the few things I did try were broken. As soon as I patched things got much worse. The first round the window manager (KDE) got all screwed up. (I thought SuSE was supposed to be you select a window manager and it always comes up afterward, not root around and try to figure out how they broke it every time a new patch comes down the pike.) Then a little later when I re-installed and patched it got screwed up to the point where it wouldn't even load the kernel into memory. (So much for SuSE's automatic grub reconfiguration or whatever went wrong.) Summary: This is just way too many problems that SuSE 9.2 didn't have and it makes me a little uneasy that there are multiple globably non user friendly problems in their patches. Also there seems to be a pattern going from more broken initial release, then progressively more badly broken patches afterwards. Whatever happened to regression testing or at least testing a patch to see if it works?
Jason Snyder wrote:
Introduction: I have been a Linux user since 1996 and I have used numerous distros starting with Slackware way back in 96'. Back then I was in high school and had plenty of time to just tinker around. Now a days I just try to cut down to the meat of what I want to do (which is not tinkering around for days on end trying to get basic function) and have a system that is for the most part self configuring and managing.
Meat: I installed SuSE 9.3 multiple times on my test box. I did some reviewing of my failed installs and I found if I didn't patch the system it would come up though the few things I did try were broken. As soon as I patched things got much worse. The first round the window manager (KDE) got all screwed up. (I thought SuSE was supposed to be you select a window manager and it always comes up afterward, not root around and try to figure out how they broke it every time a new patch comes down the pike.) Then a little later when I re-installed and patched it got screwed up to the point where it wouldn't even load the kernel into memory. (So much for SuSE's automatic grub reconfiguration or whatever went wrong.)
Summary: This is just way too many problems that SuSE 9.2 didn't have and it makes me a little uneasy that there are multiple globably non user friendly problems in their patches. Also there seems to be a pattern going from more broken initial release, then progressively more badly broken patches afterwards. Whatever happened to regression testing or at least testing a patch to see if it works?
I installed SuSE 9.3 and had very few problems, certainly not anything that would make a non-usable system. Except for a few irritants, I'm quite happy with 9.3. Are you using some strange hardware configuration or, perhaps, 'tinkering' when you should not be? -- Donald D. Henson, Managing Director West El Paso Information Network The "Non-Initiation of Force Principle" Rules
On Monday 16 May 2005 11:11 am, Jason Snyder wrote:
Introduction: I have been a Linux user since 1996 and I have used numerous distros starting with Slackware way back in 96'. Back then I was in high school and had plenty of time to just tinker around. Now a days I just try to cut down to the meat of what I want to do (which is not tinkering around for days on end trying to get basic function) and have a system that is for the most part self configuring and managing.
Meat: I installed SuSE 9.3 multiple times on my test box. I did some reviewing of my failed installs and I found if I didn't patch the system it would come up though the few things I did try were broken. As soon as I patched things got much worse. The first round the window manager (KDE) got all screwed up. (I thought SuSE was supposed to be you select a window manager and it always comes up afterward, not root around and try to figure out how they broke it every time a new patch comes down the pike.) Then a little later when I re-installed and patched it got screwed up to the point where it wouldn't even load the kernel into memory. (So much for SuSE's automatic grub reconfiguration or whatever went wrong.)
Summary: This is just way too many problems that SuSE 9.2 didn't have and it makes me a little uneasy that there are multiple globably non user friendly problems in their patches. Also there seems to be a pattern going from more broken initial release, then progressively more badly broken patches afterwards. Whatever happened to regression testing or at least testing a patch to see if it works?
There must be something wrong with the way you installed but you don't give any details. What window system did you select? That might make a difference. I've installed 9.3 on 4 machines so far (including one small laptop) with nary a problem worth noting. (all were fresh installs) Don't doubt you're having problems, but I don't really think it is the fault of the release per se. Maybe some combination of hardware/whatever.
Hi, I went out of my way to have hardware that plays well with previous releases of SuSE. Here is a listing: 1. M/B: ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe (nForce2 based). 2. CPU: Athlon XP 3200. 3. RAM: 2x512 MB Corsiar XMS. (Tried Kingston Value RAM, but ran into problems with M/B insisting on too aggressive timings even after manually setting which destabilized the system.) 3. Video: GForce 6800 GT. 4. Sound: Primary - SB Live!, Secondary - SB 128, Unused - Onboard sound (broken, which seems to be common with this board). 5. Network: Primary - Onboard 10/100, Not used - Onboard Gigabit (SuSE 9.2 was fine with this one, but SuSE 9.3 couldn't handle it.) 6. TV Tuner - Hauppauge WinTV GO (SuSE 9.2 was fine with it, but SuSE 9.3 couldn't handle this one either.) I got SuSE 9.1 and SuSE 9.2 to run stable on this system and I even got windows XP to run as stable as I have ever seen windows run (which is not saying all that much). Do you see anything readily wrong with this setup?
Don't doubt you're having problems, but I don't really think it is the fault of the release per se. Maybe some combination of hardware/whatever.
Hi, On Tuesday 17 May 2005 00:27, Jason Snyder wrote:
I went out of my way to have hardware that plays well with previous releases of SuSE. Here is a listing:
1. M/B: ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe (nForce2 based). 2. CPU: Athlon XP 3200. 3. RAM: 2x512 MB Corsiar XMS. (Tried Kingston Value RAM, but ran into problems with M/B insisting on too aggressive timings even after manually setting which destabilized the system.) 3. Video: GForce 6800 GT. 4. Sound: Primary - SB Live!, Secondary - SB 128, Unused - Onboard sound (broken, which seems to be common with this board). 5. Network: Primary - Onboard 10/100, Not used - Onboard Gigabit (SuSE 9.2 was fine with this one, but SuSE 9.3 couldn't handle it.) 6. TV Tuner - Hauppauge WinTV GO (SuSE 9.2 was fine with it, but SuSE 9.3 couldn't handle this one either.)
I got SuSE 9.1 and SuSE 9.2 to run stable on this system and I even got windows XP to run as stable as I have ever seen windows run (which is not saying all that much).
Do you see anything readily wrong with this setup?
Looks unsuspicious to me. I don't know about your window manager issues (that could be anything - including misconfiguration). But the fact that two of the devices that worked fine with 9.2 (also kernel 2.6 based) are now not working anymore indicates that this could be a resource problem. Have you tried the "failsafe" settings from the boot menu? If this didn't help, have you try the various ACPI parameters as described in http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2002/10/81_acpi.html Greetings from Stuhr hartmut
On Monday, May 16, 2005 06:27 pm, Jason Snyder wrote:
Hi, I went out of my way to have hardware that plays well with previous releases of SuSE. Here is a listing:
1. M/B: ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe (nForce2 based). 2. CPU: Athlon XP 3200. 3. RAM: 2x512 MB Corsiar XMS. (Tried Kingston Value RAM, but ran into problems with M/B insisting on too aggressive timings even after manually setting which destabilized the system.) 3. Video: GForce 6800 GT. 4. Sound: Primary - SB Live!, Secondary - SB 128, Unused - Onboard sound (broken, which seems to be common with this board). 5. Network: Primary - Onboard 10/100, Not used - Onboard Gigabit (SuSE 9.2 was fine with this one, but SuSE 9.3 couldn't handle it.) 6. TV Tuner - Hauppauge WinTV GO (SuSE 9.2 was fine with it, but SuSE 9.3 couldn't handle this one either.)
I got SuSE 9.1 and SuSE 9.2 to run stable on this system and I even got windows XP to run as stable as I have ever seen windows run (which is not saying all that much).
Do you see anything readily wrong with this setup?
Don't doubt you're having problems, but I don't really think it is the fault of the release per se. Maybe some combination of hardware/whatever.
Try the following (we've seen this before with some Asus boards): 1. Make sure you have the latest BIOS, and follow the Asus procedure for loading the Default BIOS settings after the first reboot, and then go back in to configure the BIOS to your specs. Make sure you turn off in the BIOS any of the hardware that you are not using. 2. In the BIOS, there is a global memory timing setting that Asus likes to set at "Optimal" but which we have found should be set to "Normal" unless you are running, say, CL2 memory sticks when the board specs call for CL3. The loss to performance is minimal. 3. When installing SuSE (or when booting now), add the following to the kernel parm line: noapic apm=off acpi=off Let us know how it goes... Mark -- _________________________________________________________ A Message From... L. Mark Stone Reliable Networks of Maine, LLC "We manage your network so you can manage your business." 477 Congress Street Portland, ME 04101 Tel: (207) 772-5678 Web: http://www.rnome.com
Hi Mark, To be more of a field finder than zeroing in on what exactly was wrong without a doubt I tried multiple things. To start after the second most recent re-install the system was running well enough to check the logs and I saw an error allocating IRQ 7 to the TV tuner. Pulling out the SB 128 card cleared things up enough for the IRQ conflict on the tuner to go away and the TV card started working again. The system was still all messed up and I thought it might be wise to start with a clean slate and with ACPI disabled from the get go. I re-installed the system with ACPI disabled from the get go. With this setting and with the SB 128 card removed the system installed fine and all known working hardware came up and functioned fine before patches. So at this point I knew having less hardware definitely had an effect 9.3's ability to configure it properly, but I couldn't really gauge the affect disabling ACPI had. After this I installed all of the latest patches to see if there was something inherent to them that caused further problems. After installing patches, system was still fine, even after a reboot. The most recent thing I did was to put the SB 128 card back into the system. Everything came up and all seems to be well at least. So though not the most scientific way of going about things it looks to me like the suggestion of ACPI being at the heart of the matter causing resource allocation problems was the problem and the solution of disabling ACPI on boot was the solution. Thanks for your help.
Try the following (we've seen this before with some Asus boards):
1. Make sure you have the latest BIOS, and follow the Asus procedure for loading the Default BIOS settings after the first reboot, and then go back in to configure the BIOS to your specs. Make sure you turn off in the BIOS any of the hardware that you are not using.
2. In the BIOS, there is a global memory timing setting that Asus likes to set at "Optimal" but which we have found should be set to "Normal" unless you are running, say, CL2 memory sticks when the board specs call for CL3. The loss to performance is minimal.
3. When installing SuSE (or when booting now), add the following to the kernel parm line: noapic apm=off acpi=off
Let us know how it goes...
Mark
-- _________________________________________________________ A Message From... L. Mark Stone
Reliable Networks of Maine, LLC
"We manage your network so you can manage your business."
477 Congress Street Portland, ME 04101 Tel: (207) 772-5678 Web: http://www.rnome.com
On Monday 16 May 2005 18:11, Jason Snyder wrote:
Summary: This is just way too many problems that SuSE 9.2 didn't have and it makes me a little uneasy that there are multiple globably non user friendly problems in their patches. Also there seems to be a pattern going from more broken initial release,
I agree. I've installed 9.3 to half a dozen systems now, and had some level of problems with all of them. Some are just annoyances and are relatively easy to fix, but as it stands now, even SUSE kernel is completely useless to me on this system ( it does not even initialize ). And what's with the YAST now, it seems to fail random package installs for absolutely no reason. Pressing 'retry' doesn't help, but reboot does. Weird. I've had this very same bug occurring on 3 different machines, so can't really call it unique anymore. Bugger. Each release since 9.0 seems somewhat buggier than the previous one. But on the other hand, some of the work done with 9.3 is just plain great. Once you truly get it going, it's the best release yet.
then progressively more badly broken patches afterwards. Whatever happened to regression testing or at least testing a patch to see if it works?
Hmm, haven't had these though - usually releases get steadily better with time as they patch it. Usually they get usable by the time they release the FTP version. -- // Janne
participants (6)
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Bruce Marshall -
Donald D Henson -
Hartmut Meyer -
Janne Karhunen -
Jason Snyder -
L. Mark Stone