August 2009 - openSUSE Factory - openSUSE Mailing Lists

[opensuse-factory] Intel graphics problem(s)
by Ted Bullock 31 Aug '09

31 Aug '09

I have an Intel graphics chip (855gm) in my laptop and the desktop is running very slowly with Milestone 6, (compiz is disabled). https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=535480 Anyone out there experiencing this too? Anyways, I have to say that I have not been impressed with how well this driver has worked over the past number of years. Any number of times, bugs have crept in which have caused issues. For instance, in 10.3 the resolution refused to set to the native resolution of the display, in 11.0, if any videos are played, they only show up if some part of the video window is outside of the top left 1024x768 pixels and more recently, in 11.1, x won't start on the livecd, and I could never be bothered with either debugging or downloading the full DVD to see it is any different so I just stuck with 11.0 The last version that really worked great on the laptop was 10.1 (a little while ago at this point) with the old i810 driver. I'd like to see what other people have experienced with the Intel graphics hardware. -- Ted Bullock <tbullock(a)comlore.com> -- 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] Improving SSD performance
by Jeff Mahoney 31 Aug '09

31 Aug '09

Hi all - I did some performance testing with SSDs to gauge what factors are important in trying to tune for them. I've ignored parameters that will increase performance in all cases (noatime,nodiratime,etc) and focused on SSD-specific (and RAID) factors like striping and alignment. The thing about SSD devices is that they have more in common with RAID controllers than spinning disks. Behind the ATA interface lie a number of chips which the device's firmware is responsible for managing. Like RAID controllers, some do this better than others. The higher end devices will have smarter firmware and better chips. They may even make this research moot. For performance on netbooks, the cheap low-end devices are of particular interest. All of the following numbers were the result of running dbench -s 2 (synchronous mode, 2 threads). My test systems are dual core. Some details: - Unaligned means that the first partition starts at sector 63 and each cylinder is 16065 sectors. - Aligned means that the first partition starts at sector 256. For my testing the cylinder size was ignored, but it's possible to align cylinders to 128k with H=224 and S=56. - The file system is ext4 with various options. - I ran each test 3 times. - All tests were run from a rescue image of the 32 bit version of openSUSE 11.2m3. The only reason for this is that I hadn't downloaded a newer version for 32-bit systems yet. The columns correspond to: Run 1 MB/s Run 2 MB/s Run 3 MB/s Avg MB/s Percent improvement Acer Aspire One, PATA, 8 GB Intel SSD (SSDPAMM008G1) hdparm results unavailable (took the disk out) Unaligned, no options: 2.187 2.118 2.169 2.158 0% Unaligned, -E stripe-width=32: 2.410 2.472 2.415 2.432 +12.7% Unaligned, -E stripe-width=128: 2.281 2.446 2.263 2.330 +7.8% Unaligned, -E stride=32: 2.165 2.241 2.145 2.184 +1.2% Aligned, no options: 2.379 2.517 2.268 2.388 +10.7% Aligned, -E stripe-width=32: 2.604 2.541 2.816 2.654 +23.0% Aligned, -E stripe-width=128: 2.544 2.816 2.574 2.645 +22.6% Aligned, -E stride=32: 2.368 2.313 2.445 2.375 +10.0% Lenovo Thinkpad X300, SATA, 64 GB Samsung SSD (MCCOE64G) hdparm -t: 88.92 MB/s hdparm --direct -t: 103.27 MB/s Unaligned, no options: 21.239 21.511 21.317 21.356 +0% Unaligned, -E stripe-width=32: 21.231 21.345 21.529 21.368 +0.06% Unaligned, -E stripe-width=128: 21.648 21.410 21.370 21.476 +0.06% Unaligned, -E stride=32: 21.674 21.583 21.289 21.513 +0.07% Aligned, no options: 24.381 24.619 24.430 24.569 +15.0% Aligned, -E stripe-width=32: 24.580 24.523 24.605 24.569 +15.0% Aligned, -E stripe-width=128: 24.282 24.369 24.436 24.362 +14.0% Aligned, -E stride=32: 24.600 24.577 24.546 24.574 +15.1% I had another SSD for my Aspire but its performance under dbench is very suspect (< 1MB/s despite a hdparm of ~ 60 MB/s), so I haven't included those results. The results, with a whopping two test devices, seem to indicate that alignment helps on low and high end devices while striping seems to help on low end devices. I'd be interested to hear how a larger cross section of devices perform. I'll also have results from LVM volumes later today. Since the placement of LVs can also affect alignment, it may be worth looking at as well. To reproduce, boot from a rescue image. Copy the test script and the dbench rpm to the host. Install dbench under /lib/firmware (it's a tmpfs dir) with rpmcpio <rpm> | cpio -id. Run the test script. Note that the test script *will* overwrite whatever data is on /dev/sda including the partition table. You can't have anything else from that disk mounted since you're messing with the partition table, which is why you need the rescue image. You'll have to reinstall from scratch afterwards unless you're using a "test" device somehow. -Jeff -- Jeff Mahoney SUSE Labs

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[opensuse-factory] Updating git-core, pidgin and sereval others fail on /usr/share/man/man3/
by Hans Bogaards 31 Aug '09

31 Aug '09

Hi All, Since this morning updating (using zypper up or zypper dup) fails for several packages: git-core perl-HTML-Parser perl-RPC-XML pidgin popt-devel subversion-perl The error I get is (for subversion-perl): ---- Installing: subversion-perl-1.6.4-4.7 [error] Installation of subversion-perl-1.6.4-4.7 failed: (with --nodeps --force) Error: Subprocess failed. Error: RPM failed: error: unpacking of archive failed on file /usr/share/man/man3/SVN::Base.3pm.gz: cpio: rename failed - No such file or directory Abort, retry, ignore? [a/r/i] (a): ---- For the others the error is identical, just with the different packages names. I am running milestone 6 with updates: Linux linux-bw7c 2.6.31-rc7-4-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT 2009-08-24 17:40:12 +0200 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux What is wrong or what am I doing wrong? -- Hans -- 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] Suggestion for redesigning the expert partitioner
by Marco Poletti 31 Aug '09

31 Aug '09

Hi, I propose to restructure the expert partitioner, is this the correct place for discussion? Should I file a bug? However, my suggestions are these: 1) I think the "Overview" and "Used devices" tabs associated with each drive are out of place, I think they should become the property window of the drive, that can be accessed by right-clicking the drive and selecting the new item "Properties" or by selecting it and clicking the new button "Properties" in the "Hard disk" view, or by right-clicking an empty space in the drive's own view and selecting Properties, or by clicking the new button "Drive properties" in the drive's own view. 2) About partitions, I'd completely remove them from the tree and move those informations to the partition's Properties window, accessible from right-clicking the partition and selecting the new item "Properties" or selecting the partition and clicking the new "Properties" button, both in the drive view and in the "Hard disks" view. 3) In computers with not too many HDs, say max 6, I'd show all the graphical bars in the "Hard disk" view. Thanks for reading, Marco Poletti -- 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] jack and sound
by Sid Boyce 31 Aug '09

31 Aug '09

If jackd is running, all apps, including those that are jack aware like audacity just don't do any sound stuff, even the example jack utils don't output sound. Is my understanding that jack should not stop non-jack aware apps from using the sound system? I found an old Fedora post that recommended the following ~/jack.pa script, I enabled those modules in default.pa and restarted pulseaudio, no change. #!/usr/bin/pulseaudio -nF # load-module module-jack-sink load-module module-jack-source load-module module-native-protocol-unix load-module module-volume-restore load-module module-default-device-restore load-module module-rescue-streams load-module module-suspend-on-idle .ifexists module-gconf.so .nofail load-module module-gconf .fail .endif .ifexists module-x11-publish.so .nofail load-module module-x11-publish .fail .endif Regards Sid. -- Sid Boyce ... Hamradio License G3VBV, Licensed Private Pilot Emeritus IBM/Amdahl Mainframes and Sun/Fujitsu Servers Tech Support Specialist, Cricket Coach Microsoft Windows Free Zone - Linux used for all Computing Tasks -- 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] WideHat.openSuSE.org
by Donn Washburn 31 Aug '09

31 Aug '09

Hey openSuSE; Please try and get fixed the /etc/zypp/repos - repo-non-oss.rep and repo-oss.repo which are linked to http://widehat.opensuse.org/ ......./media1/repos gets fixed. It is causing zypper and yast2 to fail. Site http://widehat.opensuse.org is up -- 73 de Donn Washburn 307 Savoy Street Email:" n5xwb(a)comcast.net " 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 -- 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] NetworkManager does not connect to WLAN
by Stefan Quandt 30 Aug '09

30 Aug '09

Since I no longer can connect to my WLAN with WPA2 I switched my router to unencrypted and WEP encryption. But this did not help. E.g. as part on a conneciton attempt using WEP I got the following funny NetworkManager log entry: Aug 28 22:27:03 galapagos NetworkManager: <info> Activation (eth1/wireless): connection 'MyWlan' requires no security. No secrets needed. Now I want to wipe all user defined connection settings. Any hints on hot to do this? ~/.kde4/share/apps/networkmanagement/connections seems irrelevant How can I remove NetworkManagerUserSettings? -- 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] M6 / build 233 observations
by Per Jessen 30 Aug '09

30 Aug '09

I had some spare time, so I decided to give M6 a spin. Not overly successful, though. Context: Software: M6 IA32, NET iso, repo=factory. Hardware - Proliant server, dual Intel PIII, 256M RAM. Installation on 2-drive RAID5 SCSI array behind Compaq Smart-Array. I tried it four times, all produced a hung system, in a hard lock up. No flashing keyboard LEDs, no indication of any kind. Had to power off to get the system restarted. I then tried with "noacpi apic=off" which at first seemed to work, but then still ended up hung. One clear regression - on the two attempts where I got as far as switching the bootloader to LILO before the system hung, I never got the window with "Boot Loader Location" (when configuring the bootloader. Just in case this was a hardware issue, I tried an 11.0 NET install instead, which is going fine just now. /Per -- Per Jessen, Zürich (23.1°C) -- 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] External Hard Drive Won't Mount in Host But Will in Vbox
by Nick Miller 30 Aug '09

30 Aug '09

I have an external hard drive that shows up in bios, but will not mount in my opensuse install, nore does it show up with lsusb. The drive will mount when i load up vbox with windows xp, and will also work natively on other windows systems. Using Factory-openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 6 (x86_64 Kernel-Linux 2.6.31-rc7-4-default x86_64 KDE-4.3.00 (KDE 4.3.0) "release 158" -- 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] Not getting dualscreens to work
by houghi 30 Aug '09

30 Aug '09

I have problems getting my dual screens to work. The card: ASUS NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT Silent - GPU G84 Screen 1 is no problem. The problem is when I would like to configure the second screen. I am unable to select anywhere to configure the second screen. I do want a standard two individual screens, so no cloned multihead or xinerama. I run Windowmaker on openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 6 What I tried was in init 3 run sax2 and then `sax2 -b /usr/share/sax/profile/NVidia_DualHead` and neither of them showed the ability for the second display. So how can I configure the second display (except for trying to figure out how it can be done manually) houghi -- Remind me to write an article on the compulsive reading of news. The theme will be that most neuroses can be traced to the unhealthy habit of wallowing in the troubles of five billion strangers. -- Heinlein -- 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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