December 2008 - openSUSE Users - openSUSE Mailing Lists

[opensuse] SSD storage and new Linux kernels [was: Re: IFUP (WAS: Re:knetworkmanager in 11)]
by Greg Freemyer 01 Jan '09

01 Jan '09

On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 8:23 PM, Randall R Schulz <rschulz(a)sonic.net> wrote: > On Saturday 27 December 2008 16:03, James Knott wrote: >> ... >> >> With that, you raise the question of how often you write vs read. > > Well, it is a pattern observed in all information processing that reads > outnumber writes at all levels (CPU registers, level-1 and level-2 > cache, RAM and secondary storage), but that does not change the fact > that flash-based secondary storage cannot sustain as many write cycles > as rotating magnetic media. To date, fancy redundancy schemes are > required to balance the read / write cycle limits in flash-RAM devices > when used as secondary storage devices. Finally read this thread. The subject was left far behind. First, the earlier parts of the discussion seemed to assume most hard drive failures are caused by head crashes. We do disk recovery as part of our services. Our experience is that most failures are in the electronics of the drive, not the mechanical part. If you read the Google whitepaper on disk drive reliability, they conclude that disk drives fail independent of disk usage, so I really think the conceptual idea of having a limited number of disks writes is a very minor issue compared with drives failing just because electronics routinely fail after a period of time. As to the SSD discussion: I find it really interesting and I do suspect it is where we are headed. The linux kernel now has SSD support built into some of the filesystems. (ext3?, others?) The way it works is really cool to me. First the hardware side: When a SSD is new, the onboard electronics knows that none of the sectors are in use. When a sector is written to, the onboard electronics note the fact by removing them from the "free" list. Not only is that tracked but the number of times a sector has been written is also tracked. So when you go to update a commonly used sector (ie. the filesystem superblock) the wear-leveling algorithm says, I'm going to remap that sector to a lesser used sector, lets see what I have in the free list that has the least number of writes. Thus when you write to a sector, you are always providing just a logical sector id and have no idea which physical sectors are really being written. That all happens in hardware and I don't think requires any kernel support, but as you think about it, you start to wonder how sectors that are freed at the filesystem level get freed at the SSD hardware level for reuse. In particular I had considered that case of doing a disk wipe. Once you do that, the SSD should see all the sectors as used, so the wear-leveling algorithm should quit working from that point forward. And that is where the kernel side kicks in: That answer is that the ATA spec has been extended to support a "discard" command. And the linux kernel is adding support in various filesystems to invoke discard on any sectors that become free due to file deletion, etc. The end result is that those limited write cycles get to be spread across all of the "free" SSD sectors. That also means you will not want to use a SSD in such a way that it stays mostly full, but that a small part of the data is constantly changing. Aiui, that would cause the SSD to churn through the small number of free sectors very quickly and use up their limited write-cycles. I don't know if strategies to address this are in place yet. And I don't think the actual wear-leveling algorithms are public knowledge, so it is just guess work how this all works in detail. FYI: For those saying, what is OpenSUSE 10.3 lacking that would cause me to upgrade. If you want to use SSD storage, I suspect you will need a newer kernel than 10.3 offers. In reality you will need to research when SSD discard support was added to your filesystem of choice and then be sure you have a kernel new enough to have it. Greg -- Greg Freemyer Litigation Triage Solutions Specialist http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregfreemyer First 99 Days Litigation White Paper - http://www.norcrossgroup.com/forms/whitepapers/99%20Days%20whitepaper.pdf The Norcross Group The Intersection of Evidence & Technology http://www.norcrossgroup.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] generic marvell yukon 88e8071
by M Harris 31 Dec '08

31 Dec '08

Can someone tell me the driver name that supports the marvell yukon 88e8071 ethrernet controller? I'm loading 10.3 retail, and the network config states the kernel mod is missing... lspci shows the device as a Marvell Technology Group Ltd 88E8071 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 16) Thanks -- Kind regards, M Harris <>< -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] Sound and SuSE11.1
by Marc Chamberlin 31 Dec '08

31 Dec '08

Well, I might as well join in the 11.1 upgrade frolics as well.. I am trying to do a complete install (not an upgrade) of SuSE 11.1 and it has not been an easy process! But am making progress nonetheless... My major headache at the moment is getting the sound system to work. I think I know where the trouble lies but I do not know how to fix it... My system has both a sound chip on the motherboard and I have the Creative Labs Audigy Pro 4 card installed. I suspect that having two sound systems is at the root of my troubles... I can not say a whole lot about the sound system that is on the motherboard itself, other than to say that drivers which are installed for it have a name prefix of CX88. I never use (or want to) this sound chip and in fact have disabled it in the BIOS. But despite that, SuSE and ALSA seem to be finding it. And if that is the chip that is in fact being activated for my sound, then it is no wonder I cannot hear any sound. (since nothing is hooked up to it) The sound setup tool in YaST only reports the Audigy Sound card BUT when I run Alsaconf to set it up I am getting the following error messages - Loading driver... Shutting down sound driver ERROR: Module snd_pcm is in use by cx88_alsa ERROR: Module snd_timer is in use by snd_pcm ERROR: Module snd_page_alloc is in use by snd_pcm ERROR: Module snd is in use by cx88_alsa, snd_pmc, snd_timer so this is why I suspect that SuSE is finding this sound chip on my motherboard and trying to use it instead of the Creative Labs Soundblaster Audigy 4 Pro card. In SuSE 10.3 it was sufficient to simply disable this chip in the BIOS and Alsaconf was quite happy to install the Audigy Pro sound card as my main sound system. Dunno why that is not the case any more, but can someone tell me how to completely disable the CX88 sound chip so SuSE will not find it or attempt to use it? As an FYI for those who put SuSE 11.1 installation together... I had to remove the OpenOffice modules from the set of packages to be installed. No matter whether I tried to install KDE4.1 or KDE3.5 the installation process ALWAYs hung on me when trying to install OpenOffice. I had a heck of a time getting the display to work. I am using an nVidia display card, and the installation failed to correctly set up my display. Trying to use Yast2 or Sax made it far worse and both left me with an unusable display. (I did eventually find and use the one button setup for nVidia that was described on the OpenSuSE website, and that part seemed to work fine, but I don't understand why it should have been necessary for me to hunt that down and not have the installation process automatically set up the drivers and such for me..) Also, after much hunting around I finally discovered that nVidia supplies their own X11 configuration tool and it is the ONLY way I was able to get the display to work properly. It would have been real nice if I had been told, during the installation process, that since I had an nVidia display card that I should go to the nVidia web site and use their X11 configuration tool instead. I spent hours fooling around with YaST2 and Sax trying to get this working. While on the subject of displays, why is it that the main part of YaST2 honors the font settings as defined by the KDE Control Center tool, but none of the subcomponents of YaST, like the software manager, Boot Loader, System Services (Runlevel) etc do... For me, the font is coming up so small as to be almost unreadable... While KDE4 looks promising, I had to give up on it as well and drop back to KDE3.5. There is little/no help available in it for configuring the display or sound system in KDE4.1 and I found it confusing to use. So, since I am unfamiliar with it, I had to drop back to an environment, KDE3.5, that I am familiar with and am having more luck with it, but as I mention still no joy with the sound.... Marc.. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] volume control in thinkpad with opensuse 11.1
by Michal Hlavac 31 Dec '08

31 Dec '08

Hello, is there way how to integrate thinkpad R60 volume control buttons system (alsa) volume? It works but separatly from OS. I can see value changes in /proc/acpi/ibm/volume but alsamixer without change... thanks, m. -- 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 11.1 KDE4 questions?
by Teruel de Campo MD 31 Dec '08

31 Dec '08

I have just installed opensuse 11.1 and I selected kde 4.1.3 Here so far some observations and questions 1. installation went without problem and it very fast. 2. I can NOT drag and drop a file from the desktop to either Konqueror or Dolphin. On the other hand I can do it among folders. 3. After the initial installation there was like a transparent image where firefox, thrashcan were on. I close it and I do not know where it is now. I believe it was called <desktop folder> Also what is the purpose of that desktop folder? 4. I could ping but firefox could not find the site. After fiddling around for a while I went to the about:config and change the status from false to true of network.dns.disableIPv6 I am sure has to be a better way. Under opensuse 11 I did not have to do anything. 5. I try to add the Community repository and the metadata is not there. Is something wrong or I'm too demanding to the packers to have it ready seconds after release <g> This installation is in a spare sata drive. I want to be sure everything is OK before I replace opensuse 11 in my business workstation and laptop. The dev have done an superb job with this release. It is impressive! I would appreciate your impression and any tip that cross you mind <g> -=terry(Denver)=- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] postfix smtp auth
by Patrick Shanahan 31 Dec '08

31 Dec '08

Does smtpd_sasl_auth in postfix alleviate the rejection of direct mail from dynamic ip's? -- Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA HOG # US1244711 http://wahoo.no-ip.org Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2 Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://counter.li.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] fonts
by lynn 31 Dec '08

31 Dec '08

I'm missing times New Roman and/or Thorndale in 11.1. I've tried wading through the kilometers of ubuntu newbie stuff on this on google but still can't find out how to do it. I really do need these as my scribus docs don't format properly with any replacement I can find. Please help. L x -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] Re: wifi and NetworkManager
by r 31 Dec '08

31 Dec '08

On 2008-12-31, Low Kian Seong wrote: > > On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 5:17 AM, wrote: >> >> Does anyone knows how to switch off wifi ?? >> I tried with NetworkManager but at reboot >> it restarts. >> >> Is there a way to configure NetworkManager from >> fluxbox ( or I think any other desktop manager except >> kde or gnome ) ? >> >> ( in fluxbox knetworkmanager does not produce any result ) >> > Did you configure the wifi to connect automatically? I did not configured the wifi at all. The installation system did. I have just an option in knetworkmanager to switch wlan off but at reboot it is again switched on. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] knetworkmanager in 11.1
by Mark Misulich 31 Dec '08

31 Dec '08

Hi, just looking for a little information about 11.1. Has anyone tried knetworkmanager on a laptop with 11.1 to see if it works? I haven't gone from 10.3 to 11.0 on my laptop because it never seemed to have worked or gotten fixed yet in 11.0. I am wondering if it is working properly, in order to venture putting 11.1 on the laptop. Thanks, Mark -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] Upgrading from 11.0 to 11.1 PowerPC the boot config failed.UNABLE TO BOOT!!
by alexandre suzuki 31 Dec '08

31 Dec '08

Upgrading using network install the boot configuration failed.I suspect that the fact I have a boot-device (/dev/hda6) where was the previous(11.0) suseboot folder mislead the installer because contrary to when I installed 11.0(exactly the same method) the installer seemed confused between kernel versions,the older and the new,and entered a loop of accusing error and I skipped the boot loader configuration and finished the installation,hoping to be able to configure the booting manually.But now do not know exactly the parameters to change the yaboot.conf file. I loaded the rescue system,but it´s for experts we need to know the commands. I´m thinking to load again from the network the installation system,and hope that it recognizes that only the boot loader configuration is needed and finishes correctly now that I erased the previous suseboot folder from the boot-device. Suggestions appreciated.Thanks. P.S. .../disk@0:7,/boot/vmlinux-2.6.25.18-0.2-default: unable to open file,Invalid device my Linux root is /dev/hda7,the above is the message I receive now,when booting.When I substitute the old kernel by thenew in the above OpenFirmware(BIOS) path the same message.So other changes are needed in the yaboot.conf file not only the new kernel name. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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