May 2010 - openSUSE Features - openSUSE Mailing Lists

[New: openFATE 309628] Implement Chubby-style lock service for cloud computing with SLEHA cluster stack
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 30 May '10

30 May '10

Feature added by: Jiaju Zhang (jiajuzhang) Feature #309628, revision 1 Title: Implement Chubby-style lock service for cloud computing with SLEHA cluster stack Requested by: Jiaju Zhang (jiajuzhang) Description: Chubby is a coarse-grained lock service which plays a key role in Google's cloud environment. For example, the Google File System uses a Chubby lock to appoint a GFS master server, and Bigtable uses Chubby in several ways. Now, many other open source cloud projects try to implement a clone idea with Chubby lock service, which is based on the same underlying distributed consensus protocol: Paxos. But it seems all of the open source implementation are not mature for now. Considering the core technology, we may notice that Corosync (which is one component of our SLE HA cluster stack and has been mature) has implemented some similar functions with Paxos implementation. They are on different approaches (Corosync is based on virtual synchrony algorithm and Paxos is one of the state machine replication algorithm) but could achieve one goal. So if might be feasible to implement this idea.(I'm not sure;-) In this hackweek, I'd like to do further investigating on this and implement a prototype if possible. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/309628

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[openFATE 307370] YaST2-DNS + Microsoft Zones Support
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 28 May '10

28 May '10

Feature added by: Raimo Schmidt (raimoschmidt) Feature #307370, revision 1 Title: YaST2-DNS + Microsoft Zones Support Buildservice: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Mandatory Requested by: Raimo Schmidt (raimoschmidt) Description: It's mandatory when deploying openLDAP as Primary Domain Controller (PDC) for MS Windows domain -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/307370

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[New: openFATE 309585] mango-lassi packaging
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 28 May '10

28 May '10

Feature added by: Michael Meeks (michael_meeks) Feature #309585, revision 1 Title: mango-lassi packaging Requested by: Michael Meeks (michael_meeks) Description: We should get mango-lassi and dependent packages into openSUSE, and fixed up and beautiful too. We already build it for several other distros in the build service, but not ours: https://build.opensuse.org/package/show?package=mango-lassi&project=home%3A… -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/309585

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[New: openFATE 309619] Make zypp use a single RPM transaction (no --force)
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 28 May '10

28 May '10

Feature added by: Andrew Jorgensen (ajorgensen) Feature #309619, revision 1 Title: Make zypp use a single RPM transaction (no --force) Requested by: Andrew Jorgensen (ajorgensen) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: Zypp currently does a force install of each RPM individually, this has the nasty side-effect of ignoring file conflicts and probably has a number of other nasty side-effects we don't know about. It's just a bad practice to force installation. Zypp should instead use a single RPM transaction to install all packages, without using --force. Business case (Partner benefit): openSUSE.org: Because it is so very wrong to force installation as a normal routine part of maintenance and we really need to stop this egregious practice. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/309619

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[openFATE 300758] Show unneeded packages
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 28 May '10

28 May '10

Feature changed by: Michael Schröder (mlschroe) Feature #300758, revision 128 Title: Show unneeded packages openSUSE-10.2: Rejected by Thorsten Kukuk (kukuk) reject date: 2006-08-02 11:31:19 reject reason: For SL10.2 we have to get libzypp really stable and fast before we add new features. Priority Requester: Important openSUSE-10.3: Rejected by Stanislav Visnovsky (visnov) reject date: 2007-07-17 17:03:57 reject reason: Postponing. Priority Requester: Important Projectmanager: Desirable openSUSE-11.0: Rejected by Stanislav Visnovsky (visnov) reject date: 2007-11-21 12:16:20 reject reason: Out of scope for 11.0 Priority Requester: Important openSUSE-11.1: Rejected by Stanislav Visnovsky (visnov) reject date: 2008-07-07 13:34:02 reject reason: Postponing, needs underlaying infrastructure to be fixed first. Priority Requester: Important openSUSE-11.2: Rejected by Stanislav Visnovsky (jkupec) reject date: 2009-11-30 14:20:26 reject reason: Marked as done by mistake. The feature is not done. Priority Requester: Important Projectmanager: Important - openSUSE-11.3: Evaluation + openSUSE-11.3: Done Priority Requester: Desirable Projectmanager: Important Info Provider: (Novell) Requested by: JP Rosevear (jproseve) Description: The package manager should learn to show unneeded packages (packages which are not required by other packages and are not in wanted selections) and allow to deinstall them like the popular debfoster/deborphan tools. A typical use case: user installs an application which pulls in some dependencies to test it, uninstalls the application shortly after or way later but the dependencies stay unused installed on the system. Commandline UI (zypper) only. References: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=166132 Discussion: #1: Jiri Srain (jsrain) (2007-06-05 13:46:00) Schubi, is there any possibility to make solver tell which packages are orphanized? It would be interesting especially if the packages which are marked for deletion were considered as non-installed (eg. if foo- devel is installed but marked for deletion and nothing else requires foo, then foo is orphanized). #2: Stefan Schubert (schubi2) (2007-06-06 11:04:04) (reply to #1) Currently not cause the solver has no information about who (user, package,...) has triggered the installation of a package. If we are storing this information it would be possible for solver to remove these kind of packages too. It is not simple but doable. By the way, we will have to store this kind of information in the future. E.g. we need to save the "keep state by user" in a database in order to regard this state in future solver runs. #3: Jiri Srain (jsrain) (2007-06-06 14:25:07) (reply to #2) Looks like a missunderstanding. Basically every package wihch is not required/recommended/suggested or doesn't enhance anything that is installed and not marked for deletion is IMO considered to be orphanized. If user eg. wants to remove a pattern including all its packages (which are not required by something else), solver providing this kind of information would help a lot (and I don't think that we would need any other information to be stored. #4: Stefan Schubert (schubi2) (2007-06-06 15:33:44) (reply to #3) I do not think so. What does "orphanized" mean ? Let me take your example from comment #1. foo should be deleted too if the user delete foo-devel and foo has been installed due the requirement of foo-devel. BUT the user will kill us if we are deleting foo although the user has installed foo explicit sometime ago in a seperate installation workflow. So this information ( The USER has installed foo) will be currently not saved and is needed here to decide if foo has to be deleted or not. #5: Stefan Schubert (schubi2) (2007-06-06 15:39:47) (reply to #3) Lets take your example concerning the erasing of patterns. That is much more complex. I have already described the problem here: http://en.opensuse.org/Libzypp/Solver#Known_Problems " Proper behaviour of erasing patterns" There are already some bugzilla entries: Bug 274283 - Delete iFolder from YaST makes eDirectory Delete mandatory Bug 238250 - YaST does not upgrade an Add-on Product #6: Jiri Srain (jsrain) (2007-06-08 16:46:32) See also https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=166132 This is another use case for the same solver functionality #8: Federico Lucifredi (flucifredi) (2008-06-12 20:46:17) this should be commandline-only, definitely an advanced-user option. #9: Federico Lucifredi (flucifredi) (2008-06-12 20:47:28) cut from description: See Bug 140346 #10: Duncan Mac-Vicar (dmacvicar) (2008-11-03 11:24:53) As discussed in Prague, this could be done using the package history once we have a reader. #11: Karsten König (remur) (2009-01-19 10:09:49) How about using rpmorphan, I agree with flucifredi about the command line idea... http://rpmorphan.sourceforge.net/ And otherwise you could use their system to find orphanized packages and display them in yast but make clear that deleting -all orphanized packages will also delete the ones explicitly installed... (it only detects wether the package fullfiles any requirement...) #12: Ján Kupec (jkupec) (2009-01-19 14:48:38) (reply to #11) I'm not the solver developer, but i'm pretty sure it's easy (and probably more effective) to find the 'leaf' packages (that's what rpmorphan seems to do) using existing solver (see satsolver package). But we don't want to just highlight leaf packages, we want to remove unused packages, that is all leaves minus those explicitly installed. So we will feed the solver with this 'explicitly-installed' information. The package history will be the source of this info for now. Maybe later we find some way to store this info that could be used across tools (e.g. directly in the rpm db). So rpmorphan will be able to use this info as well. #13: Pavol Rusnak (prusnak) (2009-01-19 15:44:26) (reply to #12) Yes, that's good idea. Detecting leaf packages is the first step. Detecting which ones to remove (i.e. not explicitly installed) is the second. I think that rpmorphan shows all leaf packages, but it selects only the ones that start with "lib". If we strictly followed library packaging policy that would do the trick. btw. rpmorphan is packaged in Contrib (http://en.opensuse.org/Contrib) #14: Michal Smrž (ilfirin) (2009-03-07 20:05:22) (reply to #11) I am afraid of using rpmorphan to do this. Cause last time, I tested it, it wants to remove libdvdnav and libdvdcss libraries. This is very bad. It leads to many not advanced users to ask in phorums "Why OpenSUSE is not playing DVDs anymore?" I see many problems this could make. #15: Christoph Thiel (cthiel1) (2009-04-21 15:23:06) We don't have the resources to implementing this. Seems to be a prefect fit for a community project. #17: Piotrek Juzwiak (benderbendingrodriguez) (2009-04-22 07:58:47) Maybe the idea to accomplish this would be simply by using the packages. xml file and diff it. We can already export what packages we got right? So if it would compare the packages.xml before installation and after it would then delete it. There is a problem when installing many packages, they would all have to be "grouped" which pulled which dependencies. #20: Vladimirs Kuzmins (vovachaka) (2009-10-26 16:27:51) This feature is a specially important, now when we have distro upgrade, which changes a lot of dependencies and a lot of obsolete packages remain installed. Please, someone implement it! #21: Thomas Göttlicher (tgoettlicher) (2009-10-26 16:41:29) I've added a view for orphaned packages in yast2-qt-pkg. There is a package group "orphaned packages" similar to "suggested packages" and "recommended packages" in yast2-qt-pkg version 2.18.17. #22: Atri Bhattacharya (badshah400) (2009-10-31 14:55:26) (reply to #21) Thanks for implementing this much needed feature. But this feature does not work with the gtk interface in 11.2 RC2; please have this added for the final release of 11.2. #23: Kornél Jahn (cornail) (2009-11-02 07:48:05) (reply to #21) Tried to test this but didn't seem to work on RC2: Orphaned packages view is empty. E.g. installed blender, which pulled yafray. After uninstalling blender, yafray remained installed but didn't show up as an orphaned package. Also installing audacity or inkscape pulled a lot of dependencies which were not showed as orphaned after uninstalling them. #24: Kornél Jahn (cornail) (2009-11-02 08:06:38) (reply to #23) Since it is marked as done, I filed a bug for it: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=551771 (https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=551771) #25: Ján Kupec (jkupec) (2009-11-30 14:18:55) (reply to #21) There has been a misunderstanding here. What Thomas implemented is a view of packages that no longer have update candidates (those which are probably no longer maintained, thus 'orphaned'). This very fate request (IMO) incorrectly uses the word 'orphaned' for what is better described as "unused packages" or "no longer needed packages", or "unnecessary packages". Definitely not orphans (deborphan/rpmorphan is also a misfortunate name IMO). Anyway, whether orphan or unused, this feature is not implemented yet, thus i'm reopening it for 11.3. #26: Ján Kupec (jkupec) (2009-11-30 14:21:27) reopening for 11.3 (see comment #25) #27: Ján Kupec (jkupec) (2009-11-30 14:30:44) I suggest to call these packages unused instead of orphaned . I don't want to decide this by myself, so please speak up. Here are my arguments: 1) the word 'orphan' describes something that has lost its parent(s). In this case, it is actually the child that was lost - a package that depended on other package has been removed. The parent package is still installed, but there's no more use for it - it's unused . 2) we (and a few other distros and communities as well) already use orphaned to describe packages that are no longer cared for - unmaintained packages, packages dropped from distros. #28: Ján Kupec (jkupec) (2009-11-30 15:05:21) (reply to #27) Thomas suggests that perhaps not needed (or no longer needed ) would be better than unused since 'unused' can be confused with 'not used by user' rather than 'not used by other packages'. #29: Roberto Mannai (robermann79) (2009-11-30 15:40:37) Undependent packages : packages which don't have any(more) dependency. #30: Kornél Jahn (cornail) (2009-11-30 16:15:08) I also support the not needed / no longer needed version. Orphaned is bad since it can be misunderstood, just like "undependent package", if Roberto meant to suggest it as a description for this phenomenon. Case A: If I install manually package X, which doesn't have any dependencies nor is it referred to by any other package, it is not a "not needed" one. 'Cause it was manually installed by the user. Case B: Package X is installed automatically as a dependency while installing package Y. Package Y is then removed, but X stays, with no other package referring to it as a dependency. X is then a "not needed" package. #31: Roberto Mannai (robermann79) (2009-11-30 17:00:02) (reply to #30) +1 Kornél Regarding Case A: of course "not needed package" is a subset "undependent package" - "not needed" catches the user's point of view and it is more precise. Nevertheless, determining that "not needed" packages is a hard job, so it could be a good starting point just knowing which are the "undependent" ones (at least as a first step). #32: Roberto Mannai (robermann79) (2009-11-30 17:47:05) (reply to #31) The user could have a graphical list of "undependent packages", which then he could mark each of them as "used/not used". The GUI then could suggest the "unused packages" for removal (this being a temporary but useful use case). #33: Ken Schneider (kensch) (2009-12-15 18:15:55) When you install a package using package management it checks to make sure all dependencies are also installed or adds them to the install list via the "Requires" feature. When de-installing the package check the list of "Requires" packages and see which ones can also be de- installed. That way there are no left over packages. If one of the "Requires" packages are also needed by other packages they are left installed. I am no where near being a programmer but that would seem to be simple to do. #34: Ján Kupec (jkupec) (2009-12-15 18:47:57) (reply to #33) Such procedure would also wipe out packages that you still want to use. E.g. you have nagios-plugins-zypper, which requires zypper. Now, 'zypper remove nagios-plugins-zypper' would realize that after removing nagios-plugins-zypper nothing requires zypper, and would want to remove zypper as well. So what your idea lacks is a list of packages that were installed in the past based on explicit request by user. The procedure must avoid removing these. See also c#12 #36: Ján Kupec (jkupec) (2009-12-15 18:47:02) So i'm renaming this fate request to 'Show unneeded packages' (to make it shorter) to avoid further confustion. #37: Don Hughes (dehughes) (2009-12-15 19:10:53) I also would like to see this feature. I currently use rpmorphan with a list of things that it will mark that I know that I need. I also occationally go through yast2 and try to uninstall things that I do not recognize and see if they are flagged as being needed by something else. Both time consuming and error prone. And, a lot of packages seem to be some what careless in what the require for prereqs - pulling in KDE,gnome, and X11 packages on text- only machines for example; which then triggers a flood of KDE, gnome, and X11 library installations which I then have to mannually uninstall and mark as taboo. On my external facing servers I do not like to have any extra/unneeded/unwanted packages to provide possible attack vectors. #39: Rafael Belmonte (eaglescreen) (2010-01-10 22:43:40) Hello, this is one of the main causes of I use more Debian/Ubuntu than OpenSuse. Debian & Ubuntu already have this implemented. I think this is a fundamental aspect to work in OpenSuse. Debian & Ubuntu can distinguish packages that were manually installed and packages that were installed just to satisfy dependencies. OpenSuse needs to do this too. #40: Tim Edwards (tk83) (2010-01-27 15:46:00) I'd also like to see this, Mandriva added it in a couple of releases ago and it's great. It's really missing in Opensuse #41: Eduard Huguet (eduardhc) (2010-03-02 15:55:43) (reply to #40) Agreed. Being a long time user of both Gentoo and Ubuntu, I was really shocked to discover that zypper was lacking this feature. Even more: when talking about Linux with friends I always make mention of this kind of "autoremove unneeded" option as one of the strong points of Linux package managing systems, as I was really taking for granted that any package manager out there had this feature included... Regards. - #42: Rémy Marquis (spyhawk) (2010-05-02 17:13:32) Michael Andres started to implement this feature in Libzypp 7.4, see http://lists.opensuse.org/zypp-devel/2010-04/msg00033.html -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/300758

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[New: openFATE 309622] QtOBS - openSUSE Buildservice access lib (Qt based)
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 28 May '10

28 May '10

Feature added by: Klaas Freitag (kfreitag) Feature #309622, revision 1 Title: QtOBS - openSUSE Buildservice access lib (Qt based) Requested by: Klaas Freitag (kfreitag) Description: A proper Qt based library to access the openSUSE Buildservice would be nice. It would make it easiest to get project- und package information in Qt/KDE based desktop programs. More sophisticated features would be up- and download of files, build flag controlling and what not. There is already some code with functionality at gitorious at http://gitorious.org/opensuse/qtobs . Everybody who is interested to learn both Qt and the Buildservice is welcome to pick it up and work on it. I am happy to help :-) -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/309622

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[openFATE 309448] Clean temporary data in SUSE
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 28 May '10

28 May '10

Feature changed by: Sascha Peilicke (saschpe) Feature #309448, revision 24 Title: Clean temporary data in SUSE openSUSE-11.3: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Mandatory Requested by: Michal Vyskocil (mvyskocil) Description: The current default behavior of SUSE is not touch files in /tmp and others to prevent an unwanted data lost. There are at least two requests willing to change it somehow: * FATE#307510: Cron: set MAX_DAYS_IN_TMP different from 0 * bug#594778 - RN: include tmpwatch in a pattern The pros: * The common meaining of /tmp is that is for temporary data. FHS says - "Programs must not assume that any files or directories in /tmp are preserved between invocations of the program". FHS also allows the removal of a content of /var/tmp and /var/cache , even if those directories should be more persistent as /tmp . * As SUSE places the /tmp and /var on root partition by default and not remove the content of it, the free space should be simply eaten. There are a lot of applications in SUSE distribution that stores a lot of data inside those dirs, but because of the common meaning - they not removed them. For instance - Mozilla Firefox, ssh, gpg, kde, mc, Adobe Flash, and many others. The other way is to fix all of those programs to safely remove all content they store in /tmp after it's not needed. The cons: * Strictly speaking the not removal of /tmp and others is not againts FHS. * Change of the default is dangerous, especially if we are talking about files removal, because long time SUSE users might rely on this specific behavior of SUSE. * The default should be SAFE and not removing of files is considered as a safe default. Please note this FATE is not about concrete technical solution (existing scron script, tmwatch, tmpfs, /dev/shm, or something else). The question is - change the default behavior to remove temporary files, or not ? And if so, which ones and how often. Discussion: #1: Per Jessen (pjessen) (2010-05-04 11:31:51) I'm not really sure how this differs from feature 307510, but never mind - the only advantage of this change is to save disk space. Disk space is becoming cheaper by the minute and Terabyte is no longer an exotic amount reserved for large datacentres. I say we keep the safe default in openSUSE, and leave it to the sysadmin to do the one-line change if he or she wants to automatically purge temporary files. #3: Michal Vyskocil (mvyskocil) (2010-05-04 12:00:54) (reply to #1) The biggest reason is that this FATE does not recommend the technical solution. You're not right, the advantage is to prevent the filling of the disc on a running system. Your argument about cheaper disc space is true only if you consider new and new hardware. The existing one has typically fixed amount of disc space, should not be wasted by having a lot of unwanted data in /tmp . For instance my five year old laptop has 40GB HDD and 7GB root partition, so it is very sensitive on available space - not all SUSE are in datacenters :-). #5: Per Jessen (pjessen) (2010-05-05 13:25:22) (reply to #3) So for five years you have (presumably) managed quite well without this default setting. My argument about cheaper disk space has held true since around 2000 when disk sizes started doubling about once a year due to GMR. Not having temporary files purged was not an issue then, I see no reason why it is likely to become an issue now or later (with disk sizes continuing to grow). Neither openSUSE nor SuSE Linux have ever done such an automatic purge by default, so I maintain it is not a safe change as people may well have gotten used to keeping non- temporary data in /tmp. Given the minimal advantage, the risk of deleting non-temporary data and that changing the retention time is a matter of five seconds with vi, this is really not much of a feature. IMHO. #2: Guido Berhörster (gberh) (2010-05-04 11:41:11) Cleaning /tmp on bootup and/or periodically through a cronjob is also common practice on all other major Linux distros (e.g. Debian, Ubuntu, RHEL/Fedora, Mandriva) and UNIX(-like) OS (e.g. Solaris/Opensolaris, OpenBSD). I'd also really like to hear any use cases and reasons why users would put any valuable data in /tmp (rather than /var/tmp or their homedir) and expect it to persist indefinitely. #4: Gerald Pfeifer (geraldpfeifer) (2010-05-04 13:25:25) It's not necessarily (just) about disk size, there is also the aspect of partitioning and /tmp may not be all that large. It's also not primarily about data centers (which is not the key focus of openSUSE), but more individual users or wide spread use not necessarily governed by professional admins, and there this just reduces risk assuming we go for a somewhat conservative default (not just 24 hours). The use case is my significant other's machine (or mine), not some data center. For what it's worth, I, for one, don't want to keep all the crap that tends to pile up under /tmp for years. And non-expert users, of which we have many, will be surprised what kind of staff remains under /tmp, leaving behind a trail many won't be aware of, remaining even after months or years. #6: Per Jessen (pjessen) (2010-05-05 13:35:35) (reply to #4) Well, the non-expert user is exactly who I am worried about and why I think this feature is unsafe The non-expert user won't be aware of how the professional sysadmins would like to run things, and might just (intentionally or not) store or have stored valuable data in /tmp. Oops. Besides, I disagree about the use case - my use case is my datacentre run by professional sysadmins. (who decided what the primary target audience for openSUSE is? I thought we were still aiming to be everything for everyone.) #7: Guido Berhörster (gberh) (2010-05-05 13:51:08) (reply to #6) The non-expert user will store his data in /home/non-expert where these neatly named folders Documents, Music, Pictures etc. are. But he will fill slowly fill up his 10G rootfs by opening lots of pdfs, mp3s, archives etc. from Firefox (which are put into /tmp and never get deleted) without being aware of it , let alone how to avoid this in the first place. #8: Per Jessen (pjessen) (2010-05-05 14:07:39) (reply to #7) I'm less concerned about the new non-expert user, more about the OLD ditto who had already been using e.g. /tmp for storing non-temp data. For him this would not be a safe change, even if it was bent in neon in the Changelog. (as for Firefox using /tmp - my FF3.6 doesn't seem to store anything there?) #9: Michal Vyskocil (mvyskocil) (2010-05-06 11:20:21) (reply to #8) > I'm less concerned about the new non-expert user, more about the OLD ditto who had already been using e.g. /tmp for storing non-temp data. Are there any serious reasons why those data needs to be stored in /tmp and should not be placed elsewhere in system? I'm sure that expert you mention is fully able to understand the meaning of /tmp and place his files to other safe location. Or at least disable this behavior. As I understood your arguments - there is a bug (or rather an uncommon behavior of SUSE, if you'd preffer it), but because some people rely on that, so it might be not fixed/changed. And sorry, but that's not seems to me as a right argumentation. #11: Per Jessen (pjessen) (2010-05-06 19:41:02) (reply to #9) No, there are no real reasons why data needs to be stored in /tmp (unless they are genuinely temporary). My arguments against this are: * it is unsafe. openSUSE/SuSE Linux has not been purging /tmp at least since 4.4.1 (my first SuSE Linux).Some innocent non-expert user might very well end up having valuable data purged. * the change is so easily made that it's difficult to imagine why we are even discussing it here. * the change brings no real world benefits. #14: Guido Berhörster (gberh) (2010-05-07 00:15:20) (reply to #11) >* it is unsafe. openSUSE/SuSE Linux has not been purging /tmp at least since 4.4.1 (my first SuSE Linux).Some innocent non-expert user might very well end up having valuable data purged. That really sounds a bit far fetched. tmp is short for temporary. tem·po·rary: lasting for a limited time (in this case 10 days) >* the change is so easily made that it's difficult to imagine why we are even discussing it here. Not to the innocent non-expert user who doesn't even know that this option exists, that it is not turned on by default, and why he actually wants it changed. >* the change brings no real world benefits. It has been pointed out that several times that it prevents filling up the root patition. And not everyone has a multi-terabyte rootfs, IIRC by default the installer creates a relatively small rootfs and assigns the rest of the available space to a partition which gets mounted on /home. In effect the default setting is more likely to cause harm which is why it should be changed and why e.g. FATE#307510 was requested in the first place. #15: Per Jessen (pjessen) (2010-05-07 10:46:09) (reply to #14) Last entry on my part - in my opinion, it is not a safe change and it brings little or no real-life benefits. The default setting has caused little or no harm in the last 15 years, and it is difficult to imagine why it should become more likely to cause harm in the future. #10: Ricardo Gabriel Berlasso (rgbsuse) (2010-05-06 14:23:55) Can, please, the people who are against this provide a clear user case in which retaining these files is desirable? I really can't imagine such scenario... In the 10+ years I'm using Linux I've never see anyone using /tmp as storage folder: in fact, most people I know simply ignore the content of /tmp and /var/tmp folders. Some time ago a friend of mine had a problem with a print job which went crazy: in a few seconds a log file of several GB was created without his knowledge and afterwards he had problems to log-in in his system because the disk was full: cleaning /var/tmp was the solution. #12: Per Jessen (pjessen) (2010-05-06 20:25:36) (reply to #10) Use case: Retaining files stored in /tmp in desirable when they meant to be kept. #13: Per Jessen (pjessen) (2010-05-06 21:00:10) (reply to #12) Use case: Retaining files stored in /tmp is desirable when they were meant to be kept. #16: Ricardo Gabriel Berlasso (rgbsuse) (2010-05-07 15:38:40) (reply to #13) My first reaction to your "answer" was a mixture of "are you kidding?" with a "Wait, what?", but I will try to maintain the conversation in the right track. After all, we are here exchanging ideas. Articulated and complete ideas. Files that enters automatically in the tmp folder have no value per se in the long run (youtube videos, partial downloads, temporary image files... in /var/tmp you can also find log files which only show interesting information when something goes wrong, temporary information from kde sessions...). Some of those files are erased by the app that generated them, but some not, specially when the app crash. And as I pointed before, useless and big log files are really common, specially when there is a crash. Log files are useful only immediately after a crash, and if you set a reasonably default you will not lost them. Point is: If there is some valuable information there that needs to be kept forever it is because the user puts it on purpose ... and I cannot imagine why someone should put valuable information on a temporary directory on purpose... So, again, why we should need to keep those directories without maintenance? Or if you prefers, why there could be on those directories files meant to be kept? And which are those important files? + #17: Sascha Peilicke (saschpe) (2010-05-28 16:33:05) + Another pro here is performance, when /tmp is kept in RAM via tmpfs, + access is blazingly fast (good for large compile jobs, etc.). One issue + might be a lack of sufficient physical RAM, but if /tmp needs more than + what is available swap is gonna be used anyways, so /tmp ends up on + disc again and should have the same performance as before. Nonetheless + on a netbook or a computer with only small physical RAM available, a + tmpfs solution should avoid swapping. So a /tmp size limit might be + necessary. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/309448

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[New: openFATE 308762] Remove Hal by default on opensuse 11.3
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 28 May '10

28 May '10

Feature added by: Luis Medinas (lmedinas) Feature #308762, revision 1 Title: Remove Hal by default on opensuse 11.3 openSUSE-11.3: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Luis Medinas (lmedinas) Description: Hal is deprecated and now most applications now use udev and devicekit-* (will be udisks). Now it's important to remove HAL because it will speed boot process and of course because it's not moving upstream. This pages show packages status from Fedora and Ubuntu. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/HalRemoval https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Halsectomy -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/308762

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[openFATE 120340] Run download and install in parallel
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 28 May '10

28 May '10

Feature changed by: Ján Kupec (jkupec) Feature #120340, revision 143 Title: Run download and install in parallel openSUSE-10.2: Rejected by Klaus Kämpf (kwk) reject date: 2006-08-09 11:36:10 reject reason: Not possible in 10.2 timeframe Priority Requester: Important openSUSE-10.3: Rejected by Stanislav Visnovsky (visnov) reject date: 2007-08-01 10:25:01 reject reason: Out of time. Priority Requester: Important Projectmanager: Important openSUSE-11.0: Rejected by Jiri Srain (jsrain) reject date: 2008-03-28 13:56:11 reject reason: Out of resources for 11.0. Priority Requester: Important Projectmanager: Important openSUSE-11.1: Rejected by Stanislav Visnovsky (visnov) reject date: 2008-07-11 12:06:35 reject reason: This needs to wait. Postponing. Priority Requester: Important Projectmanager: Important openSUSE-11.2: Rejected by Christoph Thiel (cthiel1) reject date: 2009-06-03 08:43:03 reject reason: No resources for 11.2. Priority Requester: Important Projectmanager: Important openSUSE-11.3: Evaluation Priority Requester: Important Projectmanager: Important Requested by: Klaus Kämpf (kwk) Requested by: Peter Poeml (poeml) Requested by: Reinhard Max (rmax) Developer: (Novell) Description: Network installation could be improved by running package download and package installation in parallel. References: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=60844 https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=209799 https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=128050 https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=370457 https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=370054 https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=385711 http://en.opensuse.org/Libzypp/Failover http://metalinker.org/ Fate #300660: Download package groups before install + Related Fate #307862: Download multiple packgaes in parallel Discussion: #2: Klaus Kämpf (kwk) (2006-08-09 11:36:42) Michael already looked at this. Should be further evaluated for 10.3 #3: Edith Parzefall (emapedl) (2007-07-31 16:56:12) Problem is: what do we do if we lost the network connection when only half the packages are installed? #7: Reinhard Max (rmax) (2008-04-10 11:42:43) (reply to #3) I think this is a general problem for network based installations. Can you elaborate if/why you see this as a special problem when download and installation are running in parallel? #8: Peter Poeml (poeml) (2008-05-19 14:49:53) (reply to #7) For reliable operation of a business critical server, it is a must that packages are downloaded first, before the installation/update is started. Otherwise a network outage can lead to a broken system which is half updated. So if parallel download/install is implemented (for desktop users, maybe...) then please make sure that it is possible to disable it. #9: Reinhard Max (rmax) (2008-05-19 16:01:15) (reply to #8) As we just sorted out on IRC, the current implementation also doesn't allow to complete download before starting installation and the feature proposed here wouldn't make this worse. But as the wish of server admins to have all packages downloaded before starting to install them is very valid, I think we should extend this feature request to contain that requirement as well, and probably rename it to "decouple download and installation". If download and installation are properly decoupled, it should just be a matter of the parameters the algorithm is called with to get one of the following behaviours: * Download and install packages one by one (as it is now) * Keep downloading subsequent packages while installing (as originally proposed here) * Use a fixed-size download cache for flow control between download an installations (in situations where download is faster than installation and disk space is limited) * Download all packages of an update or installation and install them afterwards (as requested by Peter for server admins) #10: Jiri Srain (jsrain) (2008-05-20 10:22:10) (reply to #9) We already do have similar feature: #300660: Download package groups before install #4: Edith Parzefall (emapedl) (2007-07-31 16:57:22) Please reject for 10.3. #5: Duncan Mac-Vicar (dmacvicar) (2008-01-10 16:23:46) This is included in the ZYpp plan for 11.0, however implementation will start after beta. Will keep in evaluation, it depends on other milestones for beta1 #14: Chris Hills (chaz6) (2009-02-16 16:42:06) Is there a feature request to install using both the base and updates repo so that the latest packages available at install-time are used, thus saving bandwidth? #15: Jiri Srain (jsrain) (2009-02-17 08:45:38) (reply to #14) This is how it works for quite some time. Repositories providing patches also provide the packages so that they can be installed directly from the update repositories (provided they contain newer version). #16: Duncan Mac-Vicar (dmacvicar) (2009-06-02 15:18:00) For 11.2 we will focus on flexibility of the download and install order (like installing after everything is downloaded), however parallel stuff should be done after we have this in place. Please reject. #20: Jörn Knie-von Allmen (phisiker) (2009-08-05 12:12:29) (reply to #16) Please do not reject. With a downloadprotocol this should be solvable. The Installtask can poll an that protocol (or be informed by a Signal when a download has ended. This is better then polling. Or if prefering an IPC-Framework: D-BUS. Never mind!). Such problems I had some times often to solve (but in Java) and generally, it isn't so dificult. #21: Ralph Ulrich (ulenrich) (2009-08-05 13:03:25) (reply to #20) Please reject forever: As operating system are sort of highly integrated databases there should be a commit like funcutionality: First download then install (like debian). Otherwise repositories representing a rolling release (factory) will potentially break an updating system. #22: Reinhard Max (rmax) (2009-08-06 16:18:54) (reply to #21) Yes, there are situations where this (optional) feature should better not be used, but that does not mean it should not be implemented, because there are many situations where it can be very useful. BTW, how would "download then install" give you anything near commit- like functionality? Factory could still change on the server while you are downloading and packages could still fail during installation, leaving you with an inconsistent installation. #24: Ralph Ulrich (ulenrich) (2009-08-11 23:42:59) (reply to #22) Yes, "still fail during installation": there is no commit-like functionality But in case of a changed Factory repository there would be an error: zypper dup --download-then-install || ( zypper ref && zypper dup) || ... In this more often case there would be a commit-like functionality #25: Reinhard Max (rmax) (2009-08-12 11:22:08) (reply to #24) I think the most common case is end users installing from mostly static repositories such as the original release and the official updates. That's what I had in mind when I first suggested this feature many many years ago when there was no openSUSE or Factory. So, please don't insist in this feature being rejected just because you don't have a usecase for it yourself. Nobody will force you to use it if you don't want to. #23: Reinhard Max (rmax) (2009-08-06 16:20:58) (reply to #16) As I've explained in comment #9, the different modes of operation would have been possible with a single implementation and different runtime parameters. I think this would actually be easier than implementing the different modes separately, so why hasn't it been considered? #17: Michal Papis (mpapis) (2009-07-04 20:58:23) I think great example here may be Gentoo, there You can chose the way of getting packages, by default download and installation go in paraler, but it is possible to get first sources and then run build/installation. If you are on the default and something breaks, ex. network, Yuo can always resume the last download&installation task. #18: Giuseppe Salinaro (superpeppo89) (2009-07-16 19:37:27) (reply to #17) This idea of gentoo is good... #19: Ján Kupec (jkupec) (2009-07-20 10:59:31) (reply to #18) Guys, as Duncan wrote in c#16, we are already developing the "download all, install all" mode (currently we only have "download one, install one, ..."), and yes, users will be able to choose one of these. This particular feature would be an improvement of the current mode: "download one, install one while downloading others, ...". I hope this clarifies the current status a bit. #26: Eduard Avetisyan (dich) (2009-09-15 09:16:15) (reply to #19) Sorry Jan, I think both "download one, install one, download next, install next..." and " download all, install all" are both MUCH slower than " download one, install one, download next in parallel ". Come on guys, you focused on two SLOW modes and left the only fast one for future, and that's since 5 versions! Why not reserve a couple of hundred MB (customizable) of diskspace and cache the downloads there while installing in the meantime. Hope it's not too late to think of it for os11.2... #27: Michael Kromer (mkromer) (2009-10-23 01:11:45) (reply to #26) Absolutely: I agree with you Eduard. The optimized way is to run a download process while rpm -{i,U} is running in the background, as all resources (Disk I/O, CPU, Net) can get used parallel. The only trick is to keep the installation of following packages on hold, if there is some kind of package which takes longer (like kernel-{default,source}; to keep --requires safe; example: kmp's which rely on the specific kernel version to be installed first, however even this could be developed in an optimized way, as package lists and therefore also package requirements are available at time of download). I think there would even be real great customization options possible like an option such as --download-threads. So if the installation/upgrade can keep up with the downloadspeed you will get *significant* performance. And even if not -> it could never get slower. #31: Bart Otten (bartotten) (2009-11-08 13:46:41) (reply to #26) Guess it is too late for for 11.2 but I think Eduard and Michael made a good point. This request is old, even before openFATE was for public... #32: Ján Kupec (jkupec) (2009-11-09 11:25:45) (reply to #26) Well, whether we should do one thing first and then the other, that's debatable, but the point is we do want this downloading while installing . The only issue here are the resources and priorities. Now that we have the first, we can hopefully move on to the next for 11.3 #37: Robert Davies (robopensuse) (2009-12-18 15:19:01) (reply to #32) #306966: [Beta2] No Shutdown/Suspend During Package Update https://features.opensuse.org/306966 is proposing making the slow disk Hog option DownloadInAdvance the default claiming practical integrity benefits, so this most popular feature request is needed to be implemented for 11.3 to mitigate end-user annoyance. #38: Duncan Mac-Vicar (dmacvicar) (2009-12-18 16:03:54) (reply to #37) Yeah, like if disk space would be a big problem nowadays compared with battery duration #39: Robert Davies (robopensuse) (2009-12-18 16:40:21) (reply to #38) Some people have netbooks with relatively limited space, SSD's are likely to become more popular to. So it is not just older machines with smaller disks. Improving battery life by reducing the time the disk needs to be spun up rather than idle, is just another reason to offer parallel download/install option. #28: Reza Davoudi (rd1381) (2009-10-27 14:35:07) plz make it so that it be an option in GUI not just command line i am sick of going through cmdline flags and options #29: John Bester (johnbester) (2009-10-29 07:13:05) I think the proposed sulotion will help, but to me this is not the real important issue. The most frustrating issue around installing a small package using YaST is the repository upgrade that must complete before you can do anything. (Unfortunately we do not all have the internet speeds as are the norm in Europe and US). The worst is actually when you have your laptop somewhere where you do not have internet access and have to wait for connection timeouts before you can do an installation. It happened a few times that I just wanted to install a small tool which slipped my mind when I did a clean install (such as midnight commander) quickly so that I can continue with what I am doing. At this point I am not fussed about having the absolute latest security fix - I just need to get going. In any case, I would propose that when you open the package manager, it should kick off a thread to download repository updates into a temp folder. The next time you start the package manader, it can simply replace those repositories for which there are updates available in the temp folder. My reasoning is: If I opened the package manager yesterday and I open it again today (and maybe again later today), why should I always wait a few minutes before I can start selecting packages? Switching off the refresh feature in "Software repostories" is not an option, because it takes too long and you typically do not want it switched off. #30: Reinhard Max (rmax) (2009-10-29 09:59:10) (reply to #29) Please open a new feature request for your proposal, as it is unrelated to the feature that is being discussed here. #33: Fco. Javier Nacher (xiscoj) (2009-12-07 09:39:04) hi, why don't we learn from another package managers?. I usually use smart ( http://labix.org/smart (http://labix.org/smart) ), I think it working mode is the apropiate. It downloads in parallel and after downloading all packages, installs them sequentially, also allows to update channels pressing a button only on demand, so it opens faster. I think that parallel install is not a good choice but parallel download is more than recommended. #34: Duncan Mac-Vicar (dmacvicar) (2009-12-07 11:01:03) (reply to #33) You missunderstood the feature. The feature talks about downloading multiple files at the same time, and installing what is possible to install at the same time. It does not implies that multiple packages are installed in parallel (however it does not discard it). You give no reason when stating that "parallel install is not a good choice". Downloading in parallel is something we will do anyways. However, as we have DownloadInAdvance and DownloadInHeaps, we can download group of packages that form a minimal dependency transaction. I doubt smart has this information. This would allow us to download the maximum amount of packages (either sequential or in paralell) that can be downloaded and installed while leaving the system in a consistent state. Those could be installed in parallel while the next "heap" or group is downloaded. Any error in the next download would leave the system still in a consistent state. So yes, we should learn from smart, yum and others, but we should not just copy, as we don't have all the limitations they do have, and that means we can actually try to improve things. #35: Robert Davies (robopensuse) (2009-12-07 21:21:45) (reply to #34) It is possible to grab the small "odds & sods" together that start being downloaded early in install even if they are logically independant? The trouble I notice on network install, is that there's many small packages not particularly important packages, which don't let the TCP/IP download get to decent speed, making things crawl early on at nowhere near usual bandwidth. So a strategy, like a browser of getting small files in parrallel, whilst mainly wanting those large consistent sets you mention, might make things look pleasingly snappy, rather than naive. Of course if a large package were to be downloaded, as the small ones arrive and are installed noone would complain. #40: Fco. Javier Nacher (xiscoj) (2010-01-28 09:15:41) (reply to #34) hi, I think parallel download good be a good start point, so once you have all the packages you can install without dependency problems and you'll be sure that the system will be consistent. Of course if some packages are not dependant on others could be installed while downloading the rest. But I think this could be more difficult to implement so as first step for this features could be parallel download of packages and the next step parallel install, and maybe the first step would be easier and faster to implement for 11.3 and the second step can be delayed for next opensuse version. Improving is always good :) #36: Robert Davies (robopensuse) (2009-12-10 16:21:39) Testing out Kubuntu 9.10, and one of early things it does on starting Konqi, is suggest installing "restricted" multia-media codecs. The downloads were fast, stating off at full 10Mb/s, just tailing off a touch after a while. Similarly installing 110 bug fix updates took only a few minutes, despite requiring full kernel download. By comparison, though zypper itself is fast searching in DB, getting the repo info and sequence of small files, can really keep the end user waiting with alot of under-utilised bandwidth. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/120340

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[New: openFATE 308278] openSUSE DomU PV/PVGRUB support for XEN and Citrix XenServer
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 28 May '10

28 May '10

Feature added by: Matt Sealey (mwsealey) Feature #308278, revision 1 Title: openSUSE DomU PV/PVGRUB support for XEN and Citrix XenServer openSUSE-11.3: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Mandatory Requested by: Matt Sealey (mwsealey) Description: Running Citrix XenServer or Xen Dom0 from openSUSE 11.2 is all well and good but the support for the kernel in DomU is not that great; Citrix for example provide a kernel and DVD for Debian specifically designed for DomU operation, and there are templates for installing Debian Lenny using PV-GRUB. As far as I can see this is simply not implemented in openSUSE so the support for the client Linux OS is really not as great as it could be. Is there any plan for support for this? There should be! Xen is not just about running a system capable of virtualization but running a system inside the virtualization... -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/308278

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