August 2005 - openSUSE Users - openSUSE Mailing Lists

External disk choice
by Maura Edelweiss Monville 11 Feb '06

11 Feb '06

I have a 4-year old DELL desktop with a heavy CRT monitor that I'm going to give away soon . I also have a 2 month old laptop. Both computers run Linux/SuSE. I would like to buy an external disk to save most of my s/w development now residing on my old desktop. But I would like to be able to use it also with my laptop. Both computers have some USB ports so I daresay an external USB disk would be fine .. I'd appreciate some suggestion about a USB reliable, large capacity but portable, external disk or any alternative solution. Thank you in advance. Maura

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unsuscribe
by Linda Miller 07 Feb '06

07 Feb '06

unsuscribe

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SCSI RAID recovery
by Robert Amodeo 19 Jan '06

19 Jan '06

I have a fileserver running SuSE 8.0 with 2 IDE Drives and a SCSI RAID (RAID5). The system boots up to one of the IDE drives, and the SCSI RAID drive runs as a mounted filesystem (/dev/md0). (all filesystems are REISERFS). Problem: The SCSI RAID drive has crashed (won't boot up), and I need to recover it (repair it, through some utility). Further: The software does not seem to want to mount the disks, even though the SCSI BIOS (Adaptec) recognizes the disks, and they are listed as OPTIMAL. I tried to repair the disk(s) (with reiserfsck), but it produced an error message: reiserfs_open: bread failed reading block 2 reiserfs_open: bread failed reading block 16 reiserfs_open: neither new nor old reiserfs form found on /dev/md0 The literature suggested that this error message is hardware related (either a disk is physically damaged, or maybe the RAID isn't recognized), but again, the disks are recognized (and therefore, so is the SCSI Card). I tried to boot up with SuSE CD 1 in Recovery mode, but not sure what to do there (i.e., after the root prompt - just run reiserfsck?). Literature suggests there are plenty of tools to handle disk recovery, and especially RAID support, I can't find reference to them anywhere. The installation of the RAID was trivial (using the YAST2 partitioning GUI window on startup), and yet recovery seems to be a mystery. This can't be right. Does anyone know where there are "decent" and "usable" recovery tools? OR ... does anyone know what "specifically" to do in this case? Can I re-partition without formatting, and recover the existing data? Any help is appreciated - I'm sure I'm missing something "obvious", but can't find "obviously" what to do in the literature, docs, etc. Thank you. Robert Amodeo School of Engineering and Applied Science University of California, Los Angeles

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9.3 Review
by David Johanson 06 Jan '06

06 Jan '06

Linux Magazine (Linux Pro in the US) has a 4 page review of the 9.3 release in the June 2005 issue, pgs 44-47. "Novell's Suse Linux 9.3 is a feature-rich, and robust Linux distribution. At first glance, the new version does not seem much changed from 9.2, but a lot of work has gone on under the hood. The distribution is definitely good for new users. If you already have Suse Linux 9.x or a similarly recent system, the update is only worth the effort if you are unhappy with your current setup. If you use external media on a regular basis, the update is definitely a good idea. . . . " dave -- David C. Johanson Linux Counter # 116410 Powered by SuSE Linux 7.3 People who behold a phenomenon will often extend their thinking beyond it; people who merely hear about the phenomenon will not be moved to think at all. -- Goethe

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New machine problems, looking for culprits
by Paul Alfille 26 Dec '05

26 Dec '05

A new AMD64 bit machine, new SUSE 9.3, should be heaven. Machine hangs after a few minutes of use, but I can't tell why. I hope someone recognizes a problem part so I can address it. Parts: Motherboard: Asus A8V-E includes: Disk controller: VIA SATA and IDE drives Network: Marvell Yukon 88E8053 PCI-E gigabit sound, usb, firewire on board CPU: AMD Athlon64 XP3500+ Graphics: Gigabyte PCI-Express 6600GT (NX66T128D) Attempts: WinXP: Embarassingly stable. SuSE9.3 (64bit) crashes Fedora Core 4 64-bit crashes Ubantu64 crashes DamnSmallLinux (embedded under XP with QEMU) stable!!! Obviously SuSE is my choice. I keep trying online update, hoping that the system will stay up long enough to complete and that a fix is coming. Any thoughts? Paul Alfille

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help for sight impaired people
by Doug McGarrett 09 Dec '05

09 Dec '05

Some weeks ago I inquired here about assistance for those who have difficulty seeing, as I am one, at present. I am effectively blind in the left eye and have cataract in the right. Some of this may be ameliorated in the future, some will probably not be. Nothing came back at all. The font in K-Mail out-going is about 8 point on my 17" screen, as is the font on the message names for the incoming mail. I have not been able to change this, altho the actual incoming message font I was successful in changing. I do not have access to my Windows machine at present, due to mechanical failure, and this is the only way I have to communicate. Is there no way to make SuSE Linux friendly to optically-challenged users? Please, someone, reply. --doug

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PC running (SuSE 8.2 Pro / WinME) bootloader lilo -> grub
by Mick Higgins 08 Dec '05

08 Dec '05

Hi List, I have belatedly made the change from lilo to grub carefully converting my lilo config to grub'ese. It seems to work as expected. However, I have a couple of questions which I cannot track down in any off-line source (man, info, howto's etc.) and I am not able to trawl google or list archive with a time-limited unmetered dial-up connection at present. 1. In lilo I always used the boot-floppy option so as not to upset WinME. How do I do something similar in grub? 2. When the bootloader menu appeared in lilo I could interactively overide the default runlevel (ie: boot to runlevel 3 not 5) when necessary. How is this achieved in the grub menu? I will accept a URL to the appropriate list archive entry or web page. Apologies if this has been dealt with before. -- ** Message sent via KDE KMail v1.7.2 on SuSE Linux v8.2 ** Please reply in the format that this message is sent. ** Thanks.

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NTP set up in YAST is loosing time
by Peter B Van Campen 19 Nov '05

19 Nov '05

Hi, I have used NTP in previous SUSE 9.X, but on 9.3 I used YAST to set up NTP. YASTs dialog says that it will sync to a time server at bootup. In the past I am sure that the local PC was re-sync'd quite often. I rarely ever saw a difference of more than a second between my "Atomic" wall clock or watch. But now I see the PCs time getting more and more 'off' the longer it has been booted. This is irritating and non-intuitive. The systems should stay in sync with the 'official' time servers. One should NOT have to re-boot just to get the clock back in sync. Is the a way to tell the system to regularly 'sync up'? Has anyone out there found a way to keep a 9.3 system time accurate? PeterB

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Time
by jim 13 Nov '05

13 Nov '05

Why is it everytime you boot into Suse10, that the time is different, the time zone doesn't change. Jim

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Re: [SLE] new kernels, nvidia, yast
by Robert Paulsen 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

On Tuesday 09 August 2005 18:42, Peter Nikolic wrote: > On Wednesday 10 August 2005 00:26, Donn Washburn wrote: > > You will also need a completely configured kernel source for NVidia's > > file to run > > You might also check subfs in /usr/src/kernel-modules > > SNIP > > Say WHAAAAAAA! if it is a stock SUSE keernel you need to do NO SUCH THING > AT ALL . > > if you play with fire with the kernel.org kernels then maybe but the stock > suse upgrades do not need touching at all install all four kernel update > files then you need do nothing but what i said previousley as i have been > doing for too long to remember .. > What you said previously: > cd to the place you have the driver stored the for suse 9.2 do > " ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7667-pkg1.run -q" accept the driver answer yes to the > rest of the questions about the installed driver , Driver installs then " > init 5" bingo X and KDE or the other one up and running if you had a > previous NVIDIA driver installed there is NO NEED for the sax2 bit (that > always fails big time for me any how so i hand brew things ) That didn't work for me with the latest upgrade. When I executed the file NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7667-pkg1.run it said there was no matching driver found and offered to compile it for me -- which worked just fine. I am running the SMP kernel. Don't know if that is why it couldn't find the driver. # uname -a Linux paulsen 2.6.11.4-21.8-smp #1 SMP Tue Jul 19 12:42:37 UTC 2005 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux If you examine the executable you will see that it is a script file with some binary drivers embedded into it. The text portion of the file lists the supported kernels and the list doesn't include the latest SuSE kernel (smp or not). The script then checks the Nvidia ftp server and can't find it there either. For the compile to work, you do need to first install the kernel source and do the following, as root: # cd /usr/src/linux # make cloneconfig # make prepare

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