July 2007 - openSUSE Factory - openSUSE Mailing Lists

[opensuse-factory] need help with kiwi netboot kernel
by James Tremblay 12 Jul '07

12 Jul '07

hey guys, I know you don't normally do support or troubleshooting here but, I am asking here at the suggestion of AJ, I am trying to get KIWI and LTSP working with the guys over there. I have some VIA 533 micro thin clients from the LTSP projects direct supplier http://www.disklessworkstations.com that work fine with both Ubuntu's TC server and LTSP 4.2. When I load the netboot for 10.2 my client stalls after "freeing unused memory" and loading the mouse driver. I say "stalls" because it still takes input from the keyboard and when I push the power button it unloads some pci stuff and shuts off. While trying to investigate this issue I borrowed the initrd and "linux" from the 10.2 network installation cd (http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/10.2/iso/cd/openSUSE-10.2-GM-i386…) I call the "mini" ,put those in my tftp server and it loads up just fine, of course it's looking for a network installation server which does me no good , but it loads. This leads "snorp" and I to believe it is in the netboot kernel description used by kiwi to build it's kernel. Neither of us has any kernel knowledge so I'm asking for the purposes of testing this theory further could one of you please take a moment and pull the bits out of the "initrd" from the mini that launch the scripts to start the UI for the network installation and send it to me? It would be hugely appreciated. If your in a teaching mood I'd love that too, we are in the irc room #opensuse-kiwi If there is anyone interested in learning a little about KIWI please start with building a kernel description for netbooting. The one the LTSP group built for Ubuntu is tiny and they said they achieved this by bypassing the need for "glibc" ,I think, anyway that conversation was way over my head. We need a lightweight diskless kernel build description that can be applied to all versions of SUSE since this will be needed for SLED10 as well. -- James Tremblay Director of Technology Newmarket School District Newmarket,NH http://en.opensuse.org/Education "let's make a difference" --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse-factory] some packages constantly broken
by Ain Vagula 12 Jul '07

12 Jul '07

Hi, updating suse 10.2 with Smart, some packages from Gnome repository are constantly broken, ie in 90% of cases 'server reports wrong size'. One of most certain ones is 'desktop-data-SUSE' (which was broken again at least in whole last week) and very often 'update-desktop-files' and 'desktop-translations' too. It almost never happens to other packages. As I badly need them to test translation, it brings me to some difficulties... Adrian is marked as author of these packages, can you please pay attention to this problem? Ain --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse-factory] Minutes from dist meeting 2007-07-05
by Andreas Jaeger 12 Jul '07

12 Jul '07

* FreeNX: Use of /usr/NX This was not needed anymore since the packages could be easily fixed. In general, we want to avoid such directories since this is a violation of the FHS and therefore a product containing this package could not get LSB certified. * Handling of dropped packages: Problem: packages move to BuildService or other product, adding obsolotes makes it difficult to install these packages. Real problem: Package renames which miss one case, e.g. -32bit + devel split. We should be able to test these via solver test cases: * Generate RPM database of old product * Update to current release * Check which packages are not updated In general: The solver should say that a package has a problem and is not on new media - and then propose to remove it. QA tests Alphas eery two weeks with update from 10.2. AI: QA to report bugs and use the setting "do not delete obsolete packages" AI: talk about test case generation. AI: change the default in the control file (to "do not delete obsolete packages") AI: draft paragraph for release notes AI: play with resolver * Improve debuginfo packages Some packages need many libraries for a meaningful backtrace. Idea: Add a debug_requires macro to the rpm spec files to add custom requires which then can be used by packagers in those spec files where it makes sense. AI: implement such a macro. No decision was made on removing/splitting the sources from the debuginfo package, we keep the status quo for now. * Log files and RPM spec Problem: I would like to bring up something else. There are currently some bugreports about package not owning the logfiles the included software produces. See for instance: #280493 #280474 These were reported to cause problems with a security checker. This should not only be a problem for log files but also for pid files and other varialbe data. It would need to be handled for deinstall of packages but not for update. We decided to reject these bugs for now as invalid. Let's understand the real problem first. AI: explain the problem better so that we can search for alternative solutions Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, Director Platform/openSUSE, aj(a)suse.de SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126

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[opensuse-factory] SuperTuxKart disappeared?
by Dominique Leuenberger 11 Jul '07

11 Jul '07

Hi, I've seen that supertuxkart disappeared from The factory repositories? What happened? I thought it was there to replace the old 'tuxkart' (which is also not part of factory anymore). In plus, in games:arcade, there is SuperTuxKart 0.2.99 (ok: it is 0.3.0rc1) available.. 0.3.0 is scheduled for a release in a few weeks and I hope we can have it in the distro afterwards. Dominique TMF is a global management and accounting outsourcing firm with 72 offices in 56 countries and over 2,000 professionals (February 2007). TMF is expanding rapidly throughout the world. Learn more about our unique network and our services and visit our website at www.tmf-group.com. The information contained in this e-mail communication is confidential and solely intended for the person to whom it is addressed. If someone other than the intended recipient should receive or come into possession of this e-mail communication, he/she will not be entitled to read, disseminate, disclose or duplicate it. If you are not the intended recipient, you are requested to notify the sender and to destroy the original e-mail communication. TMF is neither liable for the correct and complete transmission of the information contained in this e-mail communication nor for any delay in its receipt. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been checked for the presence of computer viruses. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse-factory] sudoers file permissions
by Hubertus A. Haniel 11 Jul '07

11 Jul '07

Hi, Anybody know if the file permission change on /etc/sudoers from 0640 to 0440 is intentional? - I am syncing /etc/sudoers between multible SuSE boxes using rdist over ssh and on my 10.3/Factory box sudo started complaining. - For the time being I have a cronjob on that box that resets the permissions but it is kind of annoying. Regards Hubba --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse-factory] what happened to factory?
by Peter Czanik 10 Jul '07

10 Jul '07

Hello, What happened to factory? It has not seen an update for more than a week. And it can't even be installed, as gpg is missing from the installer... Bye, CzP --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse-factory] Firefox 2.0.0.4 is crashing
by Silviu Marin-Caea 10 Jul '07

10 Jul '07

The tragedy is that not only is crashing randomly on my Factory machine, but also on my 10.2 stable vanilla at home. The previous version didn't crash at all. I'm gonna install debuginfo and start running firefox from the command line, to catch the problem. I don't know why it doesn't start that Talkback thing after it crashes. Does this happen to anyone else? Worse, even, on my home machine I also had crashes of kontact, konqueror, kaffeine. KDE needs an automated crashdata collector badly! The user just has to press [Send], and not run gdb and other hard stuff. I'm going to start doing the gdb stuff myself.. and file bugs. WTF, it feels like Windows 98! And I don't think it's a hardware problem, I also run on that computer some monster games that don't have any problems running stable for hours. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse-factory] Downloaded OpenOffice and Alpha5
by Donn Washburn 10 Jul '07

10 Jul '07

Hey Group; In Alpha5 what would cause a previous and today downloaded OpenOffice.tar.gz not to unzip. Using either tar -xzvf or straight gunzip. I get a failed "invalid compressed-data format" error At first I thought I had a bad ooo.tar.gz so I downloaded it again. SuSE supplied gzip-1.3.12-15 Open Office OOo_2.2.1_LinuxIntel_install_wJRE_en-US.tar.gz Any ideas -- 73 de Donn Washburn 307 Savoy Street Email: " n5xwb(a)hal-pc.org " Sugar Land, TX 77478 LL# 1.281.242.3256 Ham Callsign N5XWB HAMs : " n5xwb(a)arrl.net " VoIP via Gizmo: bmw_87kbike / via Skype: n5xwbg BMW MOA #: 4146 - Ambassador " http://counter.li.org " #279316 Did you know? The transistor was invented by three white men. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help(a)opensuse.org

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RE: [opensuse-factory] Re: Results of survey on use of proprietary software in openSUSE
by Alberto Passalacqua 09 Jul '07

09 Jul '07

Il giorno lun, 09/07/2007 alle 09.46 -0400, James Tremblay ha scritto: > I believe a complete restructuring of openSUSE's delivery should be > considered. To provide as little difference between the download and the > retail versions as possible should be the goal, And there are > differences. check the bug > https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=282531 there are differences > even the devs forget. > > my proposal is no dvd: > cd1 kde or gnome base install > cd2 OS extension, rest of yast and anything that could be called as an > underlying dependency to an application. > cd3 server applications i.e apache2,mysql,etc > cd4 server applications that rely on cd3 > cdx0 more server applications > cdX1 desktop applications, this could be more than one cd if catagories > demand the space. It could also include the EDU-CD > cdX2 non-oss > cdX3 etc > > This way a person downloading would only need to choose the desktop and > what they want to accomplish beyond that. To be honest, it seems to me the proliferation of CD's and it doesn't solve the problem. The user would have to download 1 CD and almost surely multiples CD's due to dependencies. I'd stick with one DVD with the current configuration and eventually _reduce_ the number of media by removing the 1-5 CD set, which I don't think is widely used. In other words: - _FULL_ DVD for both architecture - 1 CD install for GNOME and KDE With kind regards, Alberto --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help(a)opensuse.org

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Re: [opensuse-factory] Re: Results of survey on use of proprietary software in openSUSE
by Alberto Passalacqua 09 Jul '07

09 Jul '07

Il giorno dom, 08/07/2007 alle 14.27 -0400, James Tremblay ha scritto: > On Sun, 2007-07-08 at 18:30 +0200, Alberto Passalacqua wrote: > > Il giorno dom, 08/07/2007 alle 09.14 -0400, James Tremblay ha scritto: > > > > > Gentleman, > > > I would like to point out that the teXlive\Tex\LaTex debate seems to be > > > concerned with a relatively small group(in a world domination approach > > > of distribution, which openSUSE needs) of university\scientific users. > > > > I really think it's important to keep existing users before thinking to > > the world domination, which is, however, far if it will ever happen. > > > > So you would rather hinder spreading openSUSE than to separate packages > onto alternative sources? [You wrote to me off-list probably by mistake, so I leave the full quotations.] Don't get me wrong. I would like openSUSE to be more adopted. But we can do that without hitting the existing users, especially if they're key-users like the university ones. > > Excluding packages like LaTeX from media means excluding from the user > > base an important group of users: students, teachers, university labs. > > They won't accept to install LaTeX on each machine separately. You've to > > keep in mind that in many universities PC's are directly maintained by > > users and not by admins. > > These users don't already install MSOffice from a separate media when > they need it? Separating the OS installation media from the products is > a well established format. Ubuntu, is catching on quite well and they > use installation repositories for all but the OS. Having to install stuff from separate media is one of the biggest complaints of users, and one of the most boring activities Windows users have to do. Ubuntu is including repository directly in the distribution and it's shipping CD's to those without a fast connection. Plus, Ubuntu targets home users mainly, and, for what I know, it's not well established into research centres where Red Hat based distributions are well established (think to CentOS, Scientific Linux, ...). > > Plus, universities and research centres are where students (future > > users) get in contact with Linux. Do you think they will choose a > > distribution which requires additional media to use LaTeX (many teachers > > and scientific papers requires it) or a distribution which allows to > > install it comfortably at the installation time? > > If they are university level users than they are smart enough to > decipher the location of an additional product media when downloading > openSUSE and choose to download the LaTex product media as well, or do > you assume they are to lazy to download an extra disk? In which case how > do they get the non-oss media? You still don't get the point. There won't be any additional LaTeX media. The proposal is to leave LaTeX only on the FTP repository. The non-OSS software is on the DVD. You should know that. > It's a simple economics problem, how do you get the extra software to > the people that want it without it costing you extra money every time > someone who doesn't want it downloads. You provide multiple media and > installation sources in a well defined library. Just because it's free > software doesn't mean openSUSE should pay all the bills of your getting > it! This is the Windows way of thinking. And I'm not asking to OpenSUSE to pay any additional bill. I'm saying they should include it on the usual DVD, maybe removing really unnecessary applications like games, duplicates and such. Someone pointed out free-civ is installed by default, I don't consider it a key application. > > > This program group seems to take enough space to be on it's own CD\DVD. > > > As openSUSE moves towards the idea that the base install should meet the > > > needs of a larger group, i.e Home Users, some of the current groups are > > > going to have to accept that there favorite program will need to be on > > > an "Add-On" product CD\DVD. > > > > We are not talking of creating an additional DVD or CD. We are talking > > about leaving LaTeX only on FTP. > > > > see above remark containing Ubuntu reference. Yes. I don't want OpenSUSE to be as Ubuntu. If so, I'd use it and stop using OpenSUSE, don't you think? > > > In terms of > > > sharing them, this will increase the ease in which you distribute the > > > programs to your students \ co-workers by alleviating the requirement > > > that you have to distribute and entire distro to your students \ > > > co-workers. Your schools \ departments could simply start saying > > > openSUSE X.x or SLED X.x are necessary to take part in course X \ work > > > in department X, much like they do now for other topics, and you then > > > hand out the Tex\TeXlive DVD. > > > > Right. I see the freedom in forcing someone to use OpenSUSE or SLED > > because someone else decided. The original idea was to use Linux (what > > distribution I like) and I will find the software I need because it > > works on all distributions. It's one of the principles which brought > > Linux to be what it is today. > > Now your just pissing in the wind! Schools\Universities force > homogenization on students all the time. Some Schools even force you to > buy your laptop from a list of accepted versions or even from the school > bookstore. Homogenisation is sometime necessary, if you work with others. But probably you live in a quite illiberal place, because I don't know of universities which force student to buy notebooks from a list. They usually have some requirement about software, usually related to security, which is hard to define strict. > You say it yourself "and I will find the software I need > because it works on all distributions", let them find it on > software.opensuse.org nicely package specifically for the version they > are on and easily downloaded\mirrored to the schools local > repository...and they all have one! I said in the distribution, not somewhere in an unknown repository. > > > We as community members are responsible to the distribution and it's > > > well being,(that old "the good of many" thing) and in order for openSUSE > > > to move forward it must make life easier for a much bigger group, as the > > > 1-cd install idea does. > > > > Right. Let the home users use the 1 CD install. And put what UNIX and > > Linux users want and expect to be part of the distribution on the DVD. > > No one needs to download a 4 gig DVD just for a few programs and its > download should eventually be discontinued (Bandwidth costs openSUSE > too!)and those buying the retail version should get 3 disks; > 1: OS base install (CD-1 of choice) > 2: additional products (everything on the current OSS DVD minus the OS) > 3: non-oss Discontinue the DVD means again loosing users. It's probably the preferred media of installation and the fastest, more reliable one. Plus it's the one suggested by Novell developers to do reliable version upgrades. Another thing you should know. > if a particular group wants something like the "Tex" it can be > constructed into an "Add-on" ISO very easily, maybe even with an on-line > tool to do so, since there is already a YaST module under construction > for this. It could even start a new business line for openSUSE like > those adverts you see for buying copies of Linux distro's, only openSUSE > could also offer any software in the build-service and any arch packed > onto an ISO and mailed for $X.00 You think too much to business ;-) This adds complexity to the already complex openSUSE. This is another very frequent complaint we hear about openSUSE. It's not the case to make things worse. > > To win, Linux has to be accessible to everyone (another basic > > principle), also those without a fast connection, and they're a lot, for > > various reasons. That's why it's important to have at least one > > "complete" set of media. > > In that case, a library of downloadable\shipable sub-product RPM's\ISO's > makes even more sense, i.e. I can afford an hour of downloads this month > and I want the new openSUSE and the scientific tools group, I get > CD1-gnome in 15 minutes and the scientific tools in another 20, Now I > have 25 minutes to get a new game or two ;) vs I got the core dvd in 70 > minutes hope I can scrape up the extra cash somehow. > I shouldn't take from openSUSE or my co-workers\family any unnecessary > bandwidth. Considering the download times you reported, you're assuming your zone is reached by a fast connection. That's not always the case. You should also consider less rich countries, where Linux has a huge potential user base and where Linux is spreading probably more rapidly than in our world. To conclude, using aka_druid's words, "removing tex utils from the dvd will annoy academic users, and that's bad, period". :-) With kind regards, A. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help(a)opensuse.org

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