August 2004 - openSUSE Users - openSUSE Mailing Lists

Internet connection through modem in 9.1 is slow
by Carlos E. R. 09 May '05

09 May '05

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi, Since I updated, a month ago, from SuSE 8.2 to SuSE 9.1 I had the feeling that the modem connection was slower than previously. Previously I saw comments on this list to that effect, but they seemed to be related to winmodems. It could be just an unjustified feeling, therefore I started to pay more attention, and finally I ran some test to confirm it. Thus, I can now confirm it: there is something in SuSE 9.1 that makes Internet connection using a modem definitely slower than previous versions of SuSE. ** System ** SuSE 9.1 on a P-IV at 1.8 Ghz, with 700Mb ram. Internet connection through external serial modem (3COM US Robotics, V90 type) - no winmodem involved. I have tried reducing the TCP window to 8Kb, as recommended on the SDB: no noticeably change. Patches (YOU) are almost up to date - at 2K/s a kernel update is... fearsome :-( Connection is started using wvdial on an xterm (same definitions as in SuSE 8.2 previously). Desktop is gnome. Running susefirewall2 and DNS locally. More info: just ask for it :-) ** Symptoms ** Mail fetching (fetchmail) runs jerkily, it runs and stops, seldom reaching 5Kb/s. It may stop for as long as 1 minute, timing out. But connectivity is not lost: pings to the same server from which I'm downloading works; one provider yields 20% packet loss, another 1% - so packet loss is probably not the main issue. YOU takes seemingly for ever. Ftp downloads are slow. Browsing of large pages is also slow. ** Tests done ** 1) Plug the modem on my old Pentium 120 machine, running SuSE 7.3, text only. Route through intranet (one ethernet cable, direct, 100 Mb/s). Change default route in main computer (SuSE 9.1) to eth0, and do the downloading, name solving, etc, on this "fast" machine - no software is changed at all - except that wvdial and pppd runs on the other 7.3 machine. +----------+ +-----------+ +------+ | P-120 | | P-IV 1.8Gh| ---phone---|modem |---rs232---| SuSE 7.3 |--eth--| SuSE 9.1 | line +------+ | | | (fetch) | +----------+ +-----------+ Run and time a single download of 738442 bytes. During this download no other Internet activity is running (no fetchmail, no browsing, no email sending). There is the local firewall (Susefirewall2) and a local dns server. No high load tasks are running (no updatedb, for example), only the xterms on which I see the logs and enter the commands. 2), 3) Plug the modem back on my P-IV machine running SuSE 9.1. Remove default route to eth0. Repeat the download, using two different providers, to make sure. Everything else is the same. ** Conclusion of the 3 tests, in brief ** When routed through the old computer running SuSE 7.3, throughput is 5.04 KB/s (on previous, non meticulous tests, I saw speed peeks up to 8Kb when downloading email - surely due to compression). When using the fast, Pentium IV machine, with SuSE 9.1, average speed is between 1 - 2 Kbytes per second! (even less, in fact). This is a disgrace :-// I see a lot of ppp "decompression error" in the kernel logs: Jul 23 21:22:39 nimrodel kernel: PPP: VJ decompression error I count 37 of them during test #2 (none during test #3) - compared with 560 during 4 months usage of SuSE 8.2 on this same machine. ** Wild non-educated guess ** The kernel is loosing ACK packets, so the servers waits. ** Detailed results ** *********** TEST #1: teleline - routed through P120, SuSE 7.3 ************** cer@nimrodel:~> date ; time wget --timeout=45 --waitretry=10 --continue "http://old.spamassassin.org/released/Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63.tar.bz2" Fri Jul 23 20:52:39 CEST 2004 - --20:52:39-- http://old.spamassassin.org/released/Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63.tar.bz2 => `Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63.tar.bz2' Resolving old.spamassassin.org... 64.142.3.173 Connecting to old.spamassassin.org[64.142.3.173]:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 738,442 [application/x-bzip2] 100%[==============================================================================>] 738,442 5.10K/s ETA 00:00 20:55:03 (5.04 KB/s) - `Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63.tar.bz2' saved [738442/738442] real 2m24.400s user 0m0.043s sys 0m0.065s cer@nimrodel:~> l Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63.tar.bz2 - -rw-r--r-- 1 cer users 738442 2004-01-20 23:06 Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63.tar.bz2 cer@nimrodel:~> rm Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63.tar.bz2 *********** TEST #2: teleline, direct, PIV - SuSE 9.1 ************** cer@nimrodel:~> date ; time wget --timeout=45 --waitretry=10 --continue "http://old.spamassassin.org/released/Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63.tar.bz2" Fri Jul 23 21:04:31 CEST 2004 - --21:04:31-- http://old.spamassassin.org/released/Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63.tar.bz2 => `Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63.tar.bz2' Resolving old.spamassassin.org... 64.142.3.173 Connecting to old.spamassassin.org[64.142.3.173]:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 738,442 [application/x-bzip2] 5% [==> ] 37,314 541.56B/s ETA 23:15 21:06:27 (541.46 B/s) - Read error at byte 37314/738442 (Connection timed out). Retrying. - --21:06:28-- http://old.spamassassin.org/released/Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63.tar.bz2 (try: 2) => `Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63.tar.bz2' Connecting to old.spamassassin.org[64.142.3.173]:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Continued download failed on this file, which conflicts with `-c'. Refusing to truncate existing file `Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63.tar.bz2'. real 1m57.632s user 0m0.005s sys 0m0.008s So, I remove the "continue" and increase the timeout value, and try again. cer@nimrodel:~> date ; time wget --timeout=90 --waitretry=10 "http://old.spamassassin.org/released/Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63.tar.bz2" Fri Jul 23 21:08:13 CEST 2004 - --21:08:13-- http://old.spamassassin.org/released/Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63.tar.bz2 => `Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63.tar.bz2.2' Resolving old.spamassassin.org... 64.142.3.173 Connecting to old.spamassassin.org[64.142.3.173]:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 738,442 [application/x-bzip2] 10% [=======> ] 76,410 2.16K/s ETA 05:15 12% [=========> ] 95,234 601.24B/s ETA 10:52 22% [================> ] 166,186 694.98B/s ETA 10:40 29% [======================> ] 219,762 896.54B/s ETA 10:49 {xterm resize} 41% [=====================> ] 305,194 496.80B/s ETA 10:03 {xterm resize} 43% [================> ] 321,122 412.63B/s ETA 10:49 96% [======================================> ] 709,186 538.58B/s ETA 00:37 100%[========================================>] 738,442 2.21K/s ETA 00:00 21:23:27 (809.97 B/s) - `Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63.tar.bz2.2' saved [738442/738442] real 15m13.735s user 0m0.006s sys 0m0.016s Connectivity was not lost during pauses: cer@nimrodel:~> ping old.spamassassin.org PING bugzilla.spamassassin.org (64.142.3.173) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from bugzilla.spamassassin.org (64.142.3.173): icmp_seq=1 ttl=46 time=319 ms 64 bytes from bugzilla.spamassassin.org (64.142.3.173): icmp_seq=2 ttl=46 time=286 ms 64 bytes from bugzilla.spamassassin.org (64.142.3.173): icmp_seq=3 ttl=46 time=289 ms 64 bytes from bugzilla.spamassassin.org (64.142.3.173): icmp_seq=7 ttl=46 time=307 ms 64 bytes from bugzilla.spamassassin.org (64.142.3.173): icmp_seq=9 ttl=46 time=306 ms - --- bugzilla.spamassassin.org ping statistics --- 10 packets transmitted, 5 received, 50% packet loss, time 9003ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 286.976/302.200/319.884/12.398 ms cer@nimrodel:~> But you see a "50% packet loss" - although not always: cer@nimrodel:~> ping old.spamassassin.org PING bugzilla.spamassassin.org (64.142.3.173) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from bugzilla.spamassassin.org (64.142.3.173): icmp_seq=1 ttl=46 time=306 ms 64 bytes from bugzilla.spamassassin.org (64.142.3.173): icmp_seq=2 ttl=46 time=286 ms 64 bytes from bugzilla.spamassassin.org (64.142.3.173): icmp_seq=3 ttl=46 time=280 ms 64 bytes from bugzilla.spamassassin.org (64.142.3.173): icmp_seq=4 ttl=46 time=282 ms 64 bytes from bugzilla.spamassassin.org (64.142.3.173): icmp_seq=5 ttl=46 time=282 ms 64 bytes from bugzilla.spamassassin.org (64.142.3.173): icmp_seq=6 ttl=46 time=279 ms 64 bytes from bugzilla.spamassassin.org (64.142.3.173): icmp_seq=7 ttl=46 time=278 ms - --- bugzilla.spamassassin.org ping statistics --- 7 packets transmitted, 7 received, 0% packet loss, time 6005ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 278.978/285.684/306.956/9.035 ms cer@nimrodel:~> The round trip increases notably when the download resumes. I tend to leave a terminal pinging something continuously, else my wvdial session timeouts at 60" (local phone is charged by the minute here), so I do know the server from which I'm downloading is not down. cer@nimrodel:~> ping -a -A old.spamassassin.org PING bugzilla.spamassassin.org (64.142.3.173) 56(84) bytes of data. ... - --- bugzilla.spamassassin.org ping statistics --- 208 packets transmitted, 167 received, 19% packet loss, time 82875ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 277.933/412.677/1731.743/272.088 ms, pipe 4, ipg/ewma 400.366/677.842 ms *********** TEST #3: tiscali, direct, PIV - SuSE 9.1 ************** Test done using an alternate provider; everything else is the same as test number 2. cer@nimrodel:~> date ; time wget --timeout=90 --waitretry=10 "http://old.spamassassin.org/released/Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63.tar.bz2" Fri Jul 23 21:27:25 CEST 2004 - --21:27:25-- http://old.spamassassin.org/released/Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63.tar.bz2 => `Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63.tar.bz2.3' Resolving old.spamassassin.org... 64.142.3.173 Connecting to old.spamassassin.org[64.142.3.173]:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 738,442 [application/x-bzip2] 2% [ ] 15,609 1.27K/s ETA 12:10 86% [==================================> ] 636,801 1.59K/s ETA 01:05 100%[========================================>] 738,442 885.09B/s ETA 00:00 21:36:03 (1.40 KB/s) - `Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63.tar.bz2.3' saved [738442/738442] real 8m37.800s user 0m0.006s sys 0m0.008s Pings during this download: - --- bugzilla.spamassassin.org ping statistics --- 714 packets transmitted, 705 received, 1% packet loss, time 444595ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 298.668/650.054/4098.931/515.073 ms, pipe 7, ipg/ewma 623.555/301.994 ms - -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFBAnkdtTMYHG2NR9URAr2VAJ9lYUrntn4LwO74A160NqRfTHmfRACfZoZ6 2Mza1LzuBsEZwy/ccQAGQvA= =C0UE -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Wacom Graphire 2 (USB) on SuSE9.1?
by Frits Wüthrich 04 May '05

04 May '05

I can't get my graphical tablet to work on my new SuSE. On SuSE8.1 it was useable as an USB wheel mouse, but on 9.1 there is no movement visible of the cursor when I choose one of the USB mice. How can I fix this? -- Frits Wüthrich

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Re: [SLE] Time synch problem
by Carlos E. R. 23 Feb '05

23 Feb '05

El 2003-07-09 a las 13:37, C Hamel escribió: (You forgot to post to the list) > I am afraid I don't even know how to ask a question, at this point, but I'll > make an attempt: Exactly where should this ntp thing be called to set the > clock ...or(/and) by what process? It is a very proper question :-) Well, it depends. There are two ways. If your computer is up all the time, and has a permanent network connection, you can use the ntpd daemon, which polls a set of servers about once a minute, and _very_ slowly adjusts the system clock; it can even note the systematic error or drift, and take that in to account to discipline the system clock. There are many options available for the daemon: see full doc in: http://localhost/usr/share/doc/packages/xntp-doc/html/index.htm Or, you may have a temporary network connection, like I do; I will explain this in some detail. We can adjust the clock to "internet" time, once, sometime after we connect to internet. This, apparently, can be done with the daemon, using some option I don't fully understand. Or we can use ntpdate - a program which is to disappear some time in the future, but that I use, and SuSE uses as well in its own script. For this, we can simply call "/etc/init.d/xntpd ntptimeset" - and assume that when "ntpdate" finally disappears SuSE will adjust the script appropriately ;-) Of course, /etc/ntp.conf has to be configured; at least, it must have a list of servers: server IP_address server name_address This is sufficient for "xntpd ntptimeset" to work; just leave the rest of the config at the default values. If you want to use the daemon, then I'm not the person to ask :-) Ok, so when is the appropriate time to make this time adjust? Well, ideally, during system boot-up, after network connection is established. This is done properly by the service xntpd, if enabled. The SuSE script "/etc/init.d/xntpd start" does first a clock set using ntpdate, if the variable XNTPD_INITIAL_NTPDATE is set to "AUTO". Then, it starts the daemon to keep time synchronized. And, if our network connection is not permanent? Then, the script "/etc/ppp/poll.tcpip", which is called from "/etc/ppp/ip-up", will adjust the clock first thing: assuming we have some servers configured, it will be done every time we connect to internet with the modem. I do it differently, only once every five times, and I also update the hwclock. The danger of this method is that the clock might suddenly go forward or backward a bit (seconds or hours, it depends): not very nice on a *nix system, but we can not avoid it. More details to be aware of: what happens to the hardware or CMOS clock? Well, the script "/etc/init.d/boot.clock" (read it, it is documented) does this sequence of things (using the command "hwclock") before starting system services: - Create if it doesn't exist, the file "/etc/adjtime" - Adjust hardware clock (CMOS) for known drift during the time the computer has been off; this depends on the previous file to work. - Copy CMOS clock (hardware) to system time (CPU and OS maintained). After this, the system goes fully up, and maybe, the clock is adjusted from the internet or by hand (danger!). But (and this is very different than windows) the CPU maintained clock has to be copied back to the CMOS, because the kernel doesn't do it. SuSE does it in the script "/etc/init.d/halt" that copies system time to hardware time just before power off. Me, I prefer to do it just after I adjust to network time, inside "ip-up.local", like this: /usr/sbin/rcxntpd ntptimeset /sbin/hwclock --systohc More things to be aware of: a common mistake is manually adjusting the system clock from kde control center (for example), and not updating the hwclock at the same time: the drift adjust algorithm of hwclock thinks that the CMOS clock is fast or slow by the same amount you adjusted the clock, and the next boot it will adjust the time by several hours... The solution is to delete "/etc/adjtime" and call "/sbin/hwclock --systohc" just then (documented on the SuSE sdb). Well, this has been enough chatter on my part; let's hope I didn't make many mistakes :-) -- Saludos Carlos Robinson

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Traffic shaping questions (NAT, Bursting etc)
by Richard Curtis 17 Jan '05

17 Jan '05

I am looking into setting up bandwidth limiting using cbq on Suse 9.1. I have a few questions though before I spend hours reading the man pages as they are quite heavy going. 1). Are there any quirks or issues using the 2.6 kernels ? 2). Will this work on a firewall that is using NAT ? Because all the traffic going out originates from the same IP. 3). Is it possible to use traffic shaping to split a connection (ADSL) four ways, so each user is guaranteed a quarter of the bandwidth, and also, to allow the other users to share unused bandwidth while a user is offline ?? 4). Can anyone point me at some documentation on this - howto's or examples ? The examples I have seen are all fairly complex. Thanks for any help people can offer. Richard

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aic7xxx_abort returns 0x2000 on SuSE 9.1 Pro
by Jason Joines 11 Jan '05

11 Jan '05

I've recently upgraded from SuSE 8.1 Pro to SuSE 9.1 Pro via a fresh install and am having big problems. I'm running a Dell PowerEdge 2550 with an integrated Adaptec Ultra3 AIC-7899, IBM Ulstrastar Ultra320 73 GB drive, and kernel is latest via YaST of 2.6.5.7-104-default. This is the same setup I've used for a long, long time with no problems under 8.1 Pro. At what seems to be completely random times I get tons of I/O errors and the machine completely ceases to function. I have syslog turned all the way up but nothing gets logged to syslog. Ocassionally I get to tty10 quickly enough to see: aic7xxx_abort returns 0x2000 SCSI error : <0 0 0 0> return code = 0x6000000 end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector "varies but most recently 81773499". I've tried mutiple known good drives but the same problem occurs so unless I've had mass hard drive failures across multiple systems all at once, I'm fairly certain it's not a hard drive problem. I'm using the aic7xxx module. I noticed that there's also an aic7xxx_old module available via modprobe -l | grep -i aic7. If I used YaST to look at possible modules, it shows aic79xx and aic7xxx as suggestions. Any ideas? Should I try one of these other two modules? The latest 2.6.x-cvs kernel from SuSE's ftp site? Compile my own from kernel.org? Go back to 2.4 based system?.... Also, any good way to get some logging on this? I have cron sending the output of dmesg and a few other things to a file every ten minutes to try and catch something but it hasn't worked so far with gibberish being appended to and corrupting the file. Thanks, Jason Joines =================================

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Kylix 3 in SuSE 9.0
by Damon Register 10 Jan '05

10 Jan '05

Finally I got Kylix 3 installed on SuSE 9 but found trouble right away. Even a new blank project fails to compile. I get a bunch of errors with a file called time.h. After a little searching in this group and elsewhere on the net, I found several references to http://unvclx.sourceforge.net so I got 3.5.1 and installed but still I have the same problem. I have seem some posts here from those who say they have been using Kylix but I would certainly like to know how they got it to work. Yes, I know at least one post said there wasn't much future for Kylix and after my experience so far, I am inclined to agree. I would love to use something like Qt but I don't know of any gui builders for the windows side. I have heard of tools for Linux but since I am wanting to write for both platforms, it would be nice is there was a tool for both sides Damon Register

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Why am I paying SuSE for a distro if the software developers bundle the software?
by me＠prestoncrawford.com 21 Nov '04

21 Nov '04

I asked SuSE support about the lack of Gnome Conduits and this is what I got... "Unfortunatly it is up to the developer of the software to package it up for each distribution they wish to support, unfortunatly, if the package is not available for SuSE linux all I could suggest would be searching for the sources and compiling it on your system, beyond that theres not much we could do." So... (SuSE team listening) does this mean that every single RPM installed in SuSE is provided by the people who developed the software? The Kernel, Gnome, KDE, all of that comes to SuSE already ready to go. SuSE doesn't do anything, really. What, then, does SuSE do? Burn them all onto a CD for me? Seriously, this is the most ridiculous response I've ever received from a SuSE rep. I don't, for a minute, believe that the developers of Gnome-pilot-conduits created RPMs, packages, etc. for Mandrake, Fedora, Ark Linux, FreeBSD, Debian, etc. but not for SuSE. That's absurd. All I wanted was a straight answer and I got the biggest line of bull ever. Preston

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Ah Fellas,Com'on
by John J. Devine 28 Sep '04

28 Sep '04

Hi Gang, Being rusty technically, haven't used a sliderule in almost a half century, the best I can say is don't squabble. Technology is supposed to be fun! At least I made it that way working for a living in aerospace al alia. John J. Devine

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Laptop Touchpad
by Thom Nuzum 26 Sep '04

26 Sep '04

Anybody know how to get the touchpad activated on a Laptop with 9.1? I can't seem to find any option in Yast. HP Pavilion 4600. It worked fine in 9.0 (in fact it was the only distro which installed well here).

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Failed to read wlan0 statistics: error=-61
by Matt Burke 23 Sep '04

23 Sep '04

I'm running SUSE 9 pro on a Toshiba Satellite 1115-S123, my wireless card is a Microsoft Broadband Networking MN-520 (prism chipset), and my access point is a D-Link DI-514. In Gnome, I have the wireless applet in the toolbar to show my current signal strength. From time to time, the applet will show N/A and when I check /var/log/messages I get this (ignore the old dates): May 31 13:00:55 slacker kernel: prism2sta_mlmerequest: Failed to read wlan0 statistics: error=-61 May 31 13:00:57 slacker kernel: prism2sta_mlmerequest: Failed to read wlan0 statistics: error=-61 May 31 13:00:58 slacker kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: wlan0: transmit timed out May 31 13:00:58 slacker kernel: hfa384x_tx_timeout: Implement me. May 31 13:00:59 slacker kernel: prism2sta_mlmerequest: Failed to read wlan0 statistics: error=-61 May 31 13:01:03 slacker last message repeated 2 times May 31 13:01:03 slacker kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: wlan0: transmit timed out May 31 13:01:03 slacker kernel: hfa384x_tx_timeout: Implement me. May 31 13:01:07 slacker kernel: prism2sta_mlmerequest: Failed to read wlan0 statistics: error=-61 When this happens I lose all connectivity to the access point. I cannot get wlan0 back up using rc network restart - I have to go in to YaST, change the settings then change them back to what they were, and apply the settings. As far as I knew YaST was basically doing the rc network restart as I was not changing any settings. If YaST cannot bring wlan0 back up I have to restart. On every boot I must also manually bring wlan0 up and add a route. I made a script for this but it's a real pain in the butt. I guess my questions are: 1) Does anyone have an idea what is going on with wlan0 and why the card cannot read the signal? 2) Is there anyway I can get my wlan0 IP and route to stay even after reboot? Any info or help would be great, thanks in advance =] Matt (By the way, I did get great joy from contacting Microsoft's Broadband Networking support and thanking them for using the Prism chipset in there cards - helping me get wireless working in Linux)

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