December 2010 - openSUSE Project - openSUSE Mailing Lists

[opensuse-project] Kiwi Instructions
by Kostas Koudaras 16 Dec '10

16 Dec '10

Hi Those days I am reading in the wiki about KIWI (http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:KIWI) and I am very excited with it,since there are many things I can make with it but from what I've read all instructions are referred to openSUSE 11.1. Does anyone knows if there are any changes I should know about before I start working with it? I am also planning to make a presentation of it on an event, since I believe it would interest a lot of people, so I need to be sure about it. Thanks Kostas 'Warlordfff' Koudaras -- http://opensuse.gr http://amb.opensuse.gr http://own.opensuse.gr http://warlordfff.tk me I am not me ------- Time travel is possible, you just need to know the right aliens -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse-project] openSUSE LTS
by Pascal Bleser 14 Dec '10

14 Dec '10

Oh yeah, here is *that* topic again ;) (and make sure to read Greg's post about Tumbleweed as well, as it is a similar kind of project, even though they are diametrically opposed ;D) Wolfgang Rosenauer (our local firefox/mozilla hero) made an interesting post on his blog, in case you're not following http://planet.opensuse.org (shame on you!): http://www.rosenauer.org/blog/2010/11/30/community-powered-long-term-suppor… Stop here. Please read that post. Done? OK, here are my 0.02EUR to that. The idea of an "openSUSE LTS" and/or "openSLES" aren't new indeed, and I suppose that most can remember the discussions around it some time ago. And from here on, by "LTS", I (and Wolfgang) mean "longer than 18 months" ;) There are basically two options on how to achieve that, from a technical perspective: 1) an LTS based on openSUSE 2) a rebranded SLES With "openSUSE LTS", the idea is, as Wolfgang already explained in his blog post, to pick up an openSUSE release when Novell (and the community) stops supporting it, when it goes EOL, which is after 18 months as of now. The effort can be a bit daunting, as it means keeping track of security vulnerabilities, backport fixes for those, or possibly upgrade to a newer version when backporting is too much work (e.g. Firefox). That's pretty much what is being done by the SUSE Security team and us (the community) during the lifetime of a release. But for longer and, hence, it is also more work (the older the packages, the more work it is to backport). The infrastructure provided on build.opensuse.org would certainly come in very handy. Especially when it'll have patch support :) "openSLES" is a totally different beast, as it means using the source packages of a SLES release and rebrand them. The obvious advantage is that it would most presumably be less work, as the hard work will already have been done by the Security team and the staff at Novell that does the SLES maintenance. But it would also be a rogue project: Novell cannot legally prevent anyone from doing just that as, albeit you do need a subscription to have access to them, the updates are also available as source packages. Nevertheless, it is not something Novell would like to see happening as they (or at least a few people I've talked to about it) believe it could be hurting their SLES business. While I don't personally share that opinion, and before 100 people comment negatively on this, it is a *fact* that no one can give any assurance or hard proof that it will not hurt the SLES business. Yes, we all know about CentOS, and a few know a few things about CentOS and Redhat I won't be citing in public (but let's say that some people who might or might not be working for Redhat have or haven't said that they believe that CentOS is effectively helping them spreading RHEL, but only off the record. or not.). But there are no hard facts or numbers to give any proof or guarantee that it would be the same with an "openSLES". And, personally, the last thing I'd want is people from Novell/SUSE losing their job because of that. Furthermore, Novell would clearly not be supportive of such a move, and it's not sure whether we would be able to use resources such as build.o.o for it. Long story short, I personally believe that the only viable option is "openSUSE LTS", but it does bring some technical challenges which require a certain number of committed contributors working on the maintenance. I really concur with Wolfgang's idea/proposal to start off with a server-oriented subset/core of openSUSE and try to keep that maintained for half a year or more, and learn from that experience to see whether we can realistically take on doing that for a longer period of time. Ideas, (constructive) criticism? :) (and thanks for reading so far, I know my mails are way too long) cheers -- -o) Pascal Bleser <pascal.bleser(a)opensuse.org> /\\ http://opensuse.org -- I took the green pill _\_v FOSDEM XI: 5 + 6 Feb 2011, http://fosdem.org

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[opensuse-project] Project "evergreen" (aka LTS)
by Wolfgang Rosenauer 14 Dec '10

14 Dec '10

Hi, there was a lot of discussion on that list about the proposal for an LTS effort or openSLE. There are pros and cons for both and those were stated in many mails now. So please let me sum up once again ;-) I mentioned somewhere in the beginning that there was so much talk and no action and I didn't want to repeat that. I'm going to start now with the following including the risk of failure: A community (we'll see) supported longer lifetime openSUSE 11.1. No, I don't think it needs an extra name as it still is 11.1. But I think I like "Evergreen" for now where that means that the "Project Evergreen" is responsible for the maintenance of that thing. Also note that I'm not against an openSLE approach and in case it happens at some point we'll see what happens with this one. I already mentioned that in the end I would be in favour to it and I also invite people to discuss that further including myself. But for now I want something to happen and I rather would like to fail instead of talking about something to death. I've already thought about technical details and how to utilize the OBS @ build.opensuse.org. There are some issues and we probably can only start with some limitations. What I really want to get now is a feeling if (and how many) people are willing to help. So everyone who is interested in helping (does not matter how) is invited to subscribe to http://lists.rosenauer.org/mailman/listinfo/evergreen (as I don't know if it really takes off and naming and stuff and it was much easier for me I set this up on my own listserver. At some point it might get transitioned to the openSUSE project, though.) We can discuss all the glory technical details there. Wolfgang wondering if people will show up there -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse-project] Presentation of the openSUSE Project from the Greek Community
by Kostas Koudaras 14 Dec '10

14 Dec '10

The Association of Greek Users and Friends of FS/OSS and the Greek openSUSE Community invite you all to the presentation of the openSUSE Project. The presentation will have 4 parts: -What is the openSUSE Project? -Presentation of the Greek openSUSE Community and how to become a part of it. -Presentation of the Revolutionary OBS (Building System). -Installation of the openSUSE Distribution. Come to meet the openSUSE Project and the Greek openSUSE Community. The presentation will take place on Saturday December 18th, 2010, 17.00 at the Computer Lab of the Economic Science Department of University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece Kostas 'Warlordfff' Koudaras -- http://opensuse.gr http://amb.opensuse.gr http://own.opensuse.gr http://warlordfff.tk me I am not me ------- Time travel is possible, you just need to know the right aliens

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Re: [opensuse-project] openSUSE LTS kernel
by Greg KH 13 Dec '10

13 Dec '10

On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 01:30:52PM -0500, Greg Freemyer wrote: > On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 1:09 PM, Greg KH <gregkh(a)suse.de> wrote: > > > On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 05:49:56PM +0100, Marcus Meissner wrote: > > > As some 2.6.27.stable support is done by the outside still (not Greg, > > > but someone else), the critical things at least should be able to get > > > picked up. > > > > Note, those .27-longterm kernel releases will be much more infrequent > > than I was doing (if that could be possible), so anyone wishing to run > > an "enterprise" distro on .27 will have to be responsible for keeping up > > with the security issues on their own as they will end up being more > > frequent than the .27-longterm releases will be. > > > > good luck, > > > > greg k-h > > > > I didn't realize SLES made major kernel version updates like that. This was one of the first times in a long time it did (we did it a long time ago in 2.4 days as well.) > Am I right in understanding Redhat keeps the same basic kernel for the full > LTS period? (ie. Aren't they planning to support 2.6.18 in Redhat 5 for a > few more years?) I don't know, why not ask them? > Timely security updates for the LTS kernel seems critical to me. (ie. If I > don't need security updates, I can just leave any old openSUSE release in > place for years.) > > Is any LTS distro supporting 2.6.27 (opensuse 11.1) or 2.6.31 (opensuse > 11.2) for the long-term? Not that I know of. All of the major "enterprise" distros agreed to pick the .32 kernel to base their products on, and did so (RHEL6, SLE11SP1, Debian, Ubuntu LTS, Oracle Unbreakable Linux, etc.) to try to reduce the ammount of churn and support they had to individually do, and instead, place it all on me :) thanks, greg k-h -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help(a)opensuse.org

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Re: [opensuse-project] openSUSE LTS kernel
by Greg Freemyer 13 Dec '10

13 Dec '10

On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 10:16 PM, Rajko M. <rmatov101(a)charter.net> wrote: > On Sunday, December 12, 2010 12:36:09 pm Kim Leyendecker wrote: >> Let me ask a technical question: >> >> Which kernel version will be supported? > > That was another comment on this discussion; a lot of words about names and > none tried to start discuss for instance how to revive 11.1 as a test case > (kernel is 2.6.27). It is just out of support, so it can be easy to continue > adding security patches. > > I would like to see some action plan what one has to do to keep 11.1 alive for > another 6 months as a test is whole idea feasible. > > In my humble opinion, better idea would be to think how to make upgrade path > bullet proof, so that one has no fear what will happen on next change. > That will help desktop and server use cases with single effort. > > -- > Regards, > Rajko My gut feeling is the answer is right (by chance?), but we have the logic backwards. The LTS project should not pick a release (11.1) and then use its kernel for the long term support regardless. I would think the kernel's supported for other LTS projects (SLES, SLED, Redhat, etc.) should be identified, and then a openSUSE release that uses a LTS kernel should be picked for LTS designation. Backporting kernel security patches is a lot of work. Also, a lot of LTS kernels get not just security updates, but functional updates. ie. Redhat has back-ported ext4 to 2.6.18 I believe so that older Redhat installs can use ext4. Redhat 6 is 2.6.32 based, so from a pure Redhat perspective 2.6.18 or 2.6.32 would be the best kernels to drive a LTS release. Fortunately SLES 11 is using the 2.6.27 kernel, so we know Novell will be back-porting security patches to it for 3 more years (or more). Does Novell also back-port new functionalities like Redhat does? Regardless since both opensuse 11.1 and SLES 11 use the 2.6.27 kernel, that kernel makes an excellent choice indeed. Is there any reason for the openSUSE 11.1 LTS release to not explicitly use the kernel from SLES 11? That way when patches come out, etc. openSUSE LTS can leverage at least that one very important security support from Novell. Greg -- Greg Freemyer Head of EDD Tape Extraction and Processing team Litigation Triage Solutions Specialist http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregfreemyer CNN/TruTV Aired Forensic Imaging Demo - http://insession.blogs.cnn.com/2010/03/23/how-computer-evidence-gets-retrie… The Norcross Group The Intersection of Evidence & Technology http://www.norcrossgroup.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help(a)opensuse.org

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Re: [opensuse-project] openSUSE LTS codename
by Greg Freemyer 13 Dec '10

13 Dec '10

On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 7:54 AM, Kim Leyendecker <kimleyendecker(a)hotmail.de> wrote: > In the most points, I agree with you. But How shall we name it during the > discussion on the Mailing list? Given Tumbleweed is used for a rolling upgrade release, Cactus, Redwood, Sequoia all sound good to me for a LTS release, but a European may not grasp the last 2 very readily. Even more long-lived and desert specific: Joshua Tree or Yucca. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_brevifolia fyi: all of the above but the cactus can live thousands of years, but they may be restricted to the American West, so not good international names. Greg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse-project] on artwork
by Alin Marin Elena 10 Dec '10

10 Dec '10

Hi there, I have a macbook pro aluminium crap on which I run opensuse... Due to my usage the poor thing it is exposed to scratches... my wrist watch mainly... As I have no intention of getting rid of the mac, the watch or the habit, I decided to get a skin to protect the mac... This is where I got an idea... It seems that there are plenty of websites that offer the possibility to skin your laptop. I was wondering if at project level we can "associate" in a way with one of them... The project provides official artwork to skin the device, we the supporters can buy it, for each bought the project gets back few shekels... What do you think about? would be a good way to increase visibility of the project and maybe get some money for it too. regards, Alin -- I force myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste. -- Marcel Duchamp Without Questions there are no Answers! _____________________________________________________________________ Alin Marin ELENA Advanced Molecular Simulation Research Laboratory School of Physics, University College Dublin ---- Ardionsamblú Móilíneach Saotharlann Taighde Scoil na Fisice, An Coláiste Ollscoile, Baile Átha Cliath ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Address: Room 318, UCD Engineering and Material Science Centre University College Dublin Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://alin.elenaworld.net alin.elena(a)ucdconnect.ie, alinm.elena(a)gmail.com ______________________________________________________________________ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse-project] news.o.o team
by Jos Poortvliet 09 Dec '10

09 Dec '10

Hi all! I bet most of you have heard of this website, news.opensuse.org. Sometimes people post random vaguely openSUSE-related stuff there. Now I thought it would be fun to create a team around that - work a bit more structured :D People with the rights to post there now post whatever they like, whenever they like. Not that that is always a bad thing, but having a little more oversight to guarantee quality and timing would be good (eg 3 articles on one day then nothing for 3 days sucks; and sometimes there is some Germanglish in there too). It ain't hard - if you are currently writing there every now and then you want to be on the team. If you are willing and able to edit posts every now and then - you want to be on the team. If you want to WRITE for news, you don't HAVE to be on the team - you can just submit stuff and the editors will edit and publish it. So who's up for this? And I expect AJ and Henne at the very least to volunteer, Sascha, you too :D I'm going for everyone who has contributed a lot of stories to News.o.o to be on the team. Or those who can and want to write... So Helen? You! Cheers, Jos

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[opensuse-project] Announcing openSUSE Tumbleweed project
by Greg KH 08 Dec '10

08 Dec '10

Hi all, There's been many discussions over the past years about a "rolling update" version of openSUSE on lots of different mailing lists and in person a different conferences. So the time now is to stop talking about it, and actually trying to do it :) So, I'd like to propose "openSUSE Tumbleweed" a repo that is a rolling updated version of openSUSE containing the latest "stable" versions of packages for people to use. To help clear up any questions about this, here are some answers to ones that I have heard a lot recently when discussing this: Q: How does this differ from Factory and the recently announced Factory-Tested? A: Factory always contains the bleeding edge versions of our packages that the maintainers have created. Sometimes these packages don't work well together and cause the machine to fail to boot (Hence the need for Factory-Tested). Tumbleweed will contain "stable" versions of these latest packages that have been deemed to "work" properly. A good example of how Tumbleweed is different from Factory would be to look at the kernel package today in Factory. It is 2.6.37-rc as the goal is to have the final 2.6.37 release in the next 11.4 release. But, it is still under active development and not recommended for some people who don't like reporting kernel bugs. For this reason, Tumbleweed would track the stable kernel releases, in this case, it would stay at 2.6.36 until the upstream kernel is released in a "stable" format. Q: What types of packages would be updated in Tumbleweed? A: What do you want to see updated? Seriously, this is something that anyone can request their packages to be updated. We will rely on the maintainers of the packages to be the ones determining the "stable" versions to be pushed into Tumbleweed. This can help with projects that don't always line up their release dates with existing openSUSE releases. If (for example) GNOME 3.0 comes out and is deemed "stable" 1 month after a openSUSE happens, users would not have to wait 6 more months to use it in a semi-stable form. Q: But wait, can't you do this today on your own by just adding a bunch of different repos to zypper and relying on that? A: Yes, you can, but if my zypper repo list is any example, that gets unwieldy (I seem to average about 12 per machine), and we don't want to have every user be forced to do this on their own. Tumbleweed would provide a single place for users that want to be on the semi-bleeding edge of packages, to have it all in one place. I'd like to do this "for real" after 11.4 is out, just due to the amount of time it will take to get the workflow down properly, and due to some other time constraints on my plate at the moment. I anticipate trying this out to start with based on 11.3 but I don't guarantee it all working properly right at the moment. So, any thoughts, ideas, objections? thanks, greg k-h -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help(a)opensuse.org

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