January 2004 - openSUSE Users - openSUSE Mailing Lists

How to set a reiserfs partition fsck occasionally?
by Michael James 02 Feb '04

02 Feb '04

While the new logging filesystems are a great improvement my experience is that they can't survive forever in the real world without an occasional rebuild or fsck. This list has had warnings by people burnt by reiserfs. I haven't (yet) lost any data but have had some scary times. This hasn't been bugs in reiserfs (3.6) itself as most instability was tracked to (very marginally) flakey RAM. However while the glitches were caused by corrupt RAM they left me with faults in the filesystem, faults that persisted across reboots. These included un-list-able and un-cat-able files. ie: read or ask the size of that file and it's bye-bye to that terminal. It made the whole system unuseable as processes "trod on the cracks" and hung. Backups? Hah, not with that file in the partition. So I think a lot of bad press stems from the misconception that any filesystem can avoid bitrot forever without an fsck. But this is painful to do by hand, I have to boot a rescue system and run reiserfsck by hand, to do the root and system partitions. How can I get back the old behaviour an fsck happening during reboot every x reboots or y days? Or, how can I trigger an "fsck reboot"? TIA, michaelj PS: I've just realized I can do it by adding an fsck into the linuxrc script of a cooked initrd image. That would give me an "fsck boot" option in grub. Comments? -- Michael James michael.james(a)csiro.au System Administrator voice: 02 6246 5040 CSIRO Bioinformatics Facility fax: 02 6246 5166

4 5

chkroot claims top infected
by David Herman 01 Feb '04

01 Feb '04

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 SuSE 9.0 Just ran chkroot (chkrootkit-0.43, Sat Dec 27 2003) and it gave the results Checking `top'... INFECTED and Checking `lkm'... You have 5 process hidden for ps command I found these commands were in an rpm updated w/ synaptic recently, ps_2003.11.17-18_i586.rpm. The file can be found at ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/apt/SuSE/9.0-i386/RPMS.suse-people I renamed top, re-installed the rpm but chkroot still shows the same result. top's size is 81.5kb and has a modified date of 2004-01-20 #top -h top: procps version 3.1.14 Is this an issue or is chkroot being fooled by the newer version? I'm also curious about the "Checking `lkm'... You have 5 process hidden for ps command" result. Whats up with that? Thanks for your ideas - -- dh -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFAG/R+BwgxlylUsJARAixkAJ47XBzOML9Qzca7NlfD2+sIcLbqKwCfWdwJ yplVdSAhtYrWMShy37v/jfk= =h9Le -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

7 15

Modem detection and configuration
by John Pettigrew 01 Feb '04

01 Feb '04

I have a modem I'm trying to configure on my father's newly SuSE-fied PC. It is (alledgedly) a real PCI modem, but doesn't show up in YaST's modem configuration. Is there any way to tell which port this modem is appearing as? What's the easiest way to test it? And how is it actually used? (I use a broadband connection, so I've never had to set up a modem before!) TiA John -- John Pettigrew Headstrong Games john(a)headstrong-games.co.uk Fun : Strategy : Price http://www.headstrong-games.co.uk/ Board games that won't break the bank Valley of the Kings: ransack an ancient Egyptian tomb but beware of mummies!

2 1

Can I convert a windows partition to linux?
by Tom Nielsen 01 Feb '04

01 Feb '04

That was a mis-leading question. I know I can and I know how. My issue, is can I convert a windows partition on hda1 (0,0). If I do, does this wipe out my mbr? Thanks, Tom -- Tom Nielsen Neuro Logic Systems 805.389.5435 x18 www.neuro-logic.com

3 2

Devices and serial ports.
by Paul Alfille 01 Feb '04

01 Feb '04

Is there a way to tell if a device is a serial port, parallel port of USB from it's name? I need this for a program I'm writing. I Want to detect which kind of device is given and treat them differently. Paul Alfille

2 3

[Fwd: VMWare 4.0 & Suse 9.0]
by Luis-Miguel Astudillo 01 Feb '04

01 Feb '04

Has anyone installed VMWare v4.0 on Suse 9.0 and if successfull what are the steps. Regards -- Luis-M.

7 12

Where is kmail?
by eddie 01 Feb '04

01 Feb '04

I've attempted to update my kde to kde3.2, which went sadly wrong I think, at least I ended up with a system that I could hardly use. Anyway, I couldn't find the kdenetwork3-mail-3.1.95 rpm. Have I missed something? Anyway, I tried to reset my desktop (go back to the earlier version of KDE). That has not worked either and I now thinking of doing a complete reinstall, just to get a useable desktop. Can someone tell me how to tweak KDE3.2 in order to get it working, with icons, panel etc. or how to get my system back to KDE3.1 without a complete reinstall? I would be most grateful. Thanks Eddie

10 12

Yet, another wireless nic question...which one should I get?
by Tom Nielsen 01 Feb '04

01 Feb '04

My wife's been bugging me to "get the damn wires hidden!" I say, it's really hard to unless we go wireless. "Fine! Do it!", she says. He, he, he.....SCORE! So, since my plan has worked this far, I need to carry it to the end. I was down at Compusa today and was looking at the Linksys wpm54g wireless nic. I tried to look up some stuff on the card first and didn't find anything that was optomistic. Question: Is anyone using this card with 9.0? If not, what card are you using? My wife is running XP (work's laptop) so it will work with anything, but I'm going with the Linksys pcmcia card. Any thoughts? I'd like to stick with a G card if possible. Thanks, Tom

3 2

NIS, NIS+, Automount which combinations work
by Steven T. Hatton 01 Feb '04

01 Feb '04

I've never found time to focus on this topic, but I believe it is very important. I discovered automount purely by accident. It wasn't until I removed NIS that I learned that automount required NIS. I seem to recall that it does (did) not work with NIS+, or something like that. I'm trying to get all this straight in my head. What are the various options available in SuSE 9.0 as regards NIS, NIS+, Automount, NFS, etc. I.e., what versions and variants are available, and how do they work together? What are the advantages and limitations of each? What kinds of security is available with each? Can the entire data transfer be encrypted? How. Can the authentication be encrypted or PKI based? I know I could probably formulate more coherent questions. I'm just trying to get some discussion going. I know LDAP, DNS, and DHCP can also play into this topic, as can IPv6. STH

7 12

DSL and SuSE?
by Stephen W 01 Feb '04

01 Feb '04

I am still new to linux and fumbling my way thru things. Seems to me there has been some discussion of using DSL with linux, but at the time I was not able to get DSL where I live. Just learned it is now available here. Will someone point my in the direction of how to access prior threads of discussions on this list (ala DSL - especially on Verizon)? Thanks ===== Stephen W Sarasota, FL "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine ..." Proverbs __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/

4 3