June 2007 - openSUSE Users - openSUSE Mailing Lists

[opensuse] openSUSE 10.2, desktop PC, disk being constantly written to. Any way to reduce it?
by Tero Pesonen 05 Jul '07

05 Jul '07

Hi all! I subscribed to this list to ask about this issue. I've not found almost any coverage on this topic, or then I've searched for wrong keywords on Google and on various mailing lists. My issues is as follows: I've recently upgraded to openSUSE 10.2 from SuSE Linux 9.3 on my desktop PC. This is no server or anything, and I'm the only user. I've noticed that at least on my upgraded installation the system seems to be almost constantly accessing through file I/O's the "/" mounted disk and also the "/home" partition. I realised this as I studied the output given by "iostat." If I leave it to monitor the system while running X and KDE, it shows constant "blocks written" action on hda, which contains both the root partition "/" and home partitions. I tried and mounted my /tmp to hdb, to see if the temp directory would be the subject of constant disk I/O (rather logical), especially while running KDE. But the /tmp partition actually shows only very limited read and write actions. If my KDE runs idle without me doing anything in particular, with some applications running such as Kontact, couple of konsoles, Firefox, couple of Konquerors, etc., the tmp sees almost no activity unless some application is operated on. Still, hda is constantly being written to. How does it show? Well, first of all, there's constantly (every few seconds) from some 8 to few dozens blocks being written, according to iostat. Almost no reading at all. Then, every so often, maybe after every 2 or 3 minutes (I'm not sure yet if this varies), it writes a bigger burst of data, one that I can easily hear the hard drive doing, and it can least a few seconds, but less than 10 seconds I'd say. This constant writing (constant writing plus regular bursts) is done irrespective to the activity of the desktop. Whether I do something or not, this happens. Even when back on pure console on run level 3. I've studied my memory utilisation. I've 512MB of RAM, and despite what "free" shows, this happen. My swap partition is on hdb, so it is not that, and it is almost always zero Kb any way. So the system is not swapping under low memory or anything. My swappiness is "60"; altering this value has no effect. And my memory utilisation (+/- buffers in cache) never seems to go below 300MB free. Anyway, as mentioned, the amount of free memory seems to have no effect on the constant writing on hda. I've searched the web to find something related to this, but have come up with nothing useful. I've closed down all unnecessary processes I know I can, but that has as little effect as anything else I try. None of the logs seem to be flooded with data, and I even turned off firewall logging. I uninstalled all Apparmor etc. stuff and even closed sshd and similar. No effect. I didn't find any way to monitor which files are constantly being written to. One command listed all open files per process, but it prints hundreds of lines, and seems to be of no use for knowing where the constant disk output is headed. So I tried to find via kfind which files have most recently been written to (access date changed to current.) There were tons of those, but at least it seems that in /sys and especially in /proc huge amount of files are updated so that they're always marked as having been updated at the same time as the current time shown by system clock. Not even a minute behind, never. Might this folder be the subject to this constant disk output? It seems it could be, or at least could be one of the culprits. All my hda partitoons were formatted for SuSE 9.3 when it was installed, and are ReiserFS. According to Yast partitioner, they seem to have been set to "ordered data mode" from the three possible (journal, ordered, writeback.) This is what was then set by default, as I don't remember to having changed those. Why is this constant I/O a problem? Well, I have a feeling my old SuSE 9.3 did not do this. What is more, I'm worried if my poor IDE hard drive can take all this strain the system is putting on it. If my hard disk is writing 24h/day, how long will it last before it dies under such server-level use? The heads need to constantly move and write... and these standard IDE HDD's are definitely no server level units that are designed to perform under constant stress. Linux being a server OS, it may not care by default about my hardware all that much. So I would definitely want to know if there was any way to make the system (Kernel?) not to write non-stop (to /proc? and/or elsewhere), and if this was a symptom of something being wrong somewhere. I've also read on the web about "laptop modes" etc. that avoid excess and unnecessary disk I/O to allow spinn-downs etc. Could something like this be employed on my desktop PC? Would there be anything in /etc/sysconfig to edit--I already even turned off all weird sounding man pages related jobs put there in "cron". And above all, do others' systems show similar disk I/O behaviour? Oh, almost forgot: I don't offer any network services etc. Not even SSH like I used to. Thank you for providing any insight you might have on this. Any kind of advice will be appreciated. I may have forgotten to mention something very elementary that I've tried or looked at, so feel free to ask if you believe I've not checked something obvious. Thank you, Tero Pesonen -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] lmtp socket - permission denied / Postfix + Cyrus + LDAP.
by lauro＠npd.ufsc.br 05 Jul '07

05 Jul '07

I'm on opensuse 10.1. I read the mailing list and noticed many people with the same problem. Cyrus and Postfix are on the same machine. Postfix cannot connect to the ltmp socket and deliver mail to Cyrus, so it can then deliver to users: --- host postfix/lmtp[7070]: A8721F25E: to=<xx@xx>, relay=none, delay=17, status=deferred (connect to /var/lib/imap/socket/lmtp[/var/lib/imap/socket/lmtp]: Permission denied) --- srwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jun 25 10:33 /var/lib/imap/socket/lmtp drwxr-x--- 13 cyrus mail 4096 Jun 26 08:03 imap (/var/lib/imap) --- user cyrus is cyrus.mail user postfix is postfix.postfix --- I tried to stop apparmor, but even so it didn't work, with the same message. I went thru the apparmor profiles and there was nothing about the postfix user/group neither the executable or that particular diretory. The apparmor profiles are the same from default install, and all mentioned software are from the 10.1 repositories. When I add the postfix user to the mail group, it works ok. But I don't want to do that, it might cause some misbehavior(?), I would like a different more "correct" approach, say to change apparmor config to let the postfix user or the executable from postfix which tries to use that socket to do so. What do you think would be more appropriated? thanks, lauro --------- imapd.conf sasl_mech_list: PLAIN sasl_pwcheck_method: saslauthd sasl_auto_transition: no configdirectory: /var/lib/imap defaultpartition: default partition-default: /var/spool/imap partition-news: /var/spool/imap/news newsspool: /var/spool/news altnamespace: no unixhierarchysep: no admins: cyrus allowanonymouslogin: no popminpoll: 1 autocreatequota: 0 umask: 007 sievehomedir: false sievedir: /var/lib/sieve hashimapspool: true allowplainttext: yes lmtpsocket: /var/lib/imap/socket/lmtp idlesocket: /var/lib/imap/socket/idlei notifysocket: /var/lib/imap/socket/notify sendmail: /usr/sbin/sendmail tls_cert_file: /var/lib/imap/server.pem tls_key_file: /var/lib/imap/server.pem tls_ca_file: /var/lib/imap/server.pem tls_session_timeout: 1440 tls_cipher_list: TLSv1:SSLv3:SSLv2:!NULL:!EXPORT:!DES:!LOW:@STRENGTH servername: xx.xx (masked) postmaster: postmaster reject8bit: no quotawarn: 90 timeout: 30 poptimeout: 10 dracinterval: 0 drachost: localhost lmtp_overquota_perm_failure: no lmtp_downcase_rcpt: yes --------- cyrus.conf START { recover cmd="ctl_cyrusdb -r" idled cmd="idled" } SERVICES { imap cmd="imapd" listen="imap" prefork=0 pop3 cmd="pop3d" listen="pop3" prefork=0 sieve cmd="timsieved" listen="sieve" prefork=0 lmtpunix cmd="lmtpd" listen="/var/lib/imap/socket/lmtp" prefork=1 } EVENTS { checkpoint cmd="ctl_cyrusdb -c" period=30 delprune cmd="cyr_expire -E 3" at=0400 tlsprune cmd="tls_prune" at=0400 } --------- main.cf (postfix - just some parts) ... mailbox_transport = lmtp:unix:/var/lib/imap/socket/lmtp mail_spool_directory = /var/mail ... --------- end ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] OpenSuSE 10.2: Firefox 2.0.0.4: no sound on youtube flash videos
by Siegfried Wolkenstein 04 Jul '07

04 Jul '07

Hello, the sound on flash videos is gone... version of the flashplayer rpm: flash-player-7.0.68.0-16 Many thanks PS: not able to provide you with further information -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] Google has an openSUSE repository
by Clayton 03 Jul '07

03 Jul '07

Don't know if anyone here is aware of this (it's not listed at http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_YaST_Package_Repositories ) Google has an openSUSE repository. Full detailed instructions on how to add the repo is here: http://www.google.com/linuxrepositories/suse102.html C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] Digital Camera support
by Jerry Feldman 03 Jul '07

03 Jul '07

I just shot about 400 pictures on a trip, and I was wondering what the best way to manage the Digital camera on SuSE 10.1. While I am a long time SuSE user, the other camera we have is my wife's and she uses that other OS. I know I should easily be able to transfer the pictures as the system will view the camera as a removable disk (or I can use the SD card directly). I'm more interested in managing the pictures and adding captions. -- Jerry Feldman <gaf(a)blu.org> Boston Linux and Unix user group http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9 PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

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[opensuse] Importing Outlook.pst to Thunderbird
by LLLActive＠GMX.Net 02 Jul '07

02 Jul '07

Hi all, I want to import from a outlook.pst file into Thunderbird. It has an import function. All goes well till the datafile is searched for by Thunderbird. It is obviously looking for an Outlook installation and the default *.pst file it refers to. There is however no Office installed at all on the system. How can Thunderbird be told which file to import from by manually selecting the *.pst file? :-) Al -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] Virtual domain, between Postfix and Qmail
by Hans Linux 02 Jul '07

02 Jul '07

please enlight me with this issue : As far as i know, Postfix can handle virtual domain, but it can not has the same username for virtual doman. For example I have 2 domain on my server : - domain www.a.com and - domain www.b.com If i have a user named 'hans', and hans is with a.com domain, then i'll have hans(a)a.com. If b.com domain has a user also name hans, then Postfix will not be able to see there are 2 hans, but only 1 hans. Thus, i can not have hans(a)b.com. Am i right? On the other hand, qmail will be able to do that. And there are many additional tool for qmail to set that up like vmailmanager, vpopadmin etc, but not postfix. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] Update of VMware ?
by Erik Jakobsen 02 Jul '07

02 Jul '07

Hi. When I want to upgrade VMware on my opensuse 10.2, i get the following: > > rpm -Uvh VMware-workstation-5.5.4-44386.i386.rpm > error: can't create transaction lock on /var/lib/rpm/__db.000 How do I continue from here ? -- Med venlig hilsen / Best regards Erik Jakobsen erik_ja(a)mail.tele.dk openSuSE 10.2 (i586) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] Help! RO File System Lock down OpenSUSE 10.2
by LLLActive＠GMX.Net 01 Jul '07

01 Jul '07

Hi all, I must be quick, before the system locks down again. It seems that since I installed OpenSUSE 10.2 and used ext3 FS, I get system Lockdowns with the File System going Read Only suddenly. At bootup the ext3 rollback of journals seem to be doing something, even if the shut down was done normally. There seems to be a correlation to high disk access, which occurs when either Evolution, KMail (Kontact) or Gimp loads and saves files on a default ext3 OpenSUES 10.2 root system, with a reiserfs partition mounted on /home/<user>/Data/Data1 and/or a xfs on /home/<user>/Data/Data2, where the data is. Can using different FS's in one system cause such problems? How can I find out what causes it? :-(( Al -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] Locked out of my software database!
by John E. Perry 01 Jul '07

01 Jul '07

Hi, My opensuse updater suddenly started showing the yellow triangle with the exclamation point a few days ago. When I try to clear it, it exits with the message "Another process is accessing the package database. Package management cannot be used now." ps -e | grep ast shows only something called "master" running, so it doesn't appear to be yast. I can't get either the updater or yast to run without rebooting the machine. What else could be locking the database? John Perry -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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