February 2011 - openSUSE Users - openSUSE Mailing Lists

[opensuse] kde 4.5.5 on openSUSE 11.2 just died after update
by Roger Oberholtzer 07 Feb '11

07 Feb '11

I just updated KDE to 4.5.5 on openSUSE 11.2. I get the kde login screen, and I can log in to other desktops (ice for example). But when I log in to KDE, the screen turns white and then black. I get an arrow cursor. Nothing more. I can restart the X server with the ctrl-backspace sequence. X is running. The cursor moves. I never get the KDE busy cursor one sees when KDE is starting. The repo KDE came from is: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Release:/45/openSUSE_11.2/ The chipset is an ATI ES1000. It runs as a non 3D chip. Nothing fancy. I forced a reinstall of the packages in this repo. No difference. I tried adding a new user jic. No difference. I see (on a virtual terminal) that many kde apps are running. But I cannot tell if one is 'stuck' or some important one is missing. Of course I am at a remote site with limited time. Could it be any other way? I am sure this is the same release of KDE that I am running on a few other systems (different hardware of course). I did not expect a problem. Where to start? Yours sincerely, Roger Oberholtzer OPQ Systems / Ramböll RST Office: Int +46 10-615 60 20 Mobile: Int +46 70-815 1696 roger.oberholtzer(a)ramboll.se ________________________________________ Ramböll Sverige AB Krukmakargatan 21 P.O. Box 17009 SE-104 62 Stockholm, Sweden www.rambollrst.se -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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Re: [opensuse] How do I mount USB drive world writable using device notifier?
by Marc Chamberlin 06 Feb '11

06 Feb '11

On 2/6/2011 4:43 AM, Anton Aylward wrote: > Marc Chamberlin said the following on 02/06/2011 12:43 AM: >> Anton, again thanks for your replies and thoughts. I see a bunch of >> replies from you so will try to address each.. As for purpose, I don't >> think that is important, but we are creating a database of old family >> pictures and want to categorize them by placing in different >> sub-directories. (along with other documents) Think about genealogy and >> family trees and you will get the idea. She works on some, I work on >> some.... When I get done with some work, I want to move the updates onto >> her USB drive and this data must be placed in appropriate or new >> directories as needed, and v.s. for her.. And we take our drives with >> us to work with other family members, hence the need for portability... > No, it *is* important because it is what drives your need for the USB. > > I too have family photos, videos, sound recordings. > I archive them to my sever and then burn them onto a CD when I want to > send them (or an update) to other family members. > > Certainly a file server (which could also serve as mail hub, web/wiki, > many other things) is a more sensible approach to "sharing". > > Using FreeNAS would soak up both your NFS and your SAMBA services, and > supply a few other services. An yes it has a GUI for management. > > My problem with your description is the idea that things have to be > moved to the USB right away. The end use of the USB - "carry about" - > is not unreasonable. Using it as a working media does not strike me as > sensible for a number of reasons: speed of access, lack of uniqueness, > and the fact that the media can only take so much use, its not like > rotating magnetic media which can be re-written indefinitely. > > The USB - or in my case the CDs - should be the END POINT of the work. > > I can also see problems with you each working on 'local' copies and > trying to cross update. You need on REFERENCE copy. > > Changing your process will eliminate many of the problems you are > creating for yourself. > > Saying that manually copying to the USB is a PITA just shows you are > hung up on moving the USB to an early point in the process rather than > the end-point which it is. > > Now I know you are going to come up with a pile of "yes, but" responses, > but the trend you are displaying is what might be termed "wallowing in > ignorance". You are headbutting Linux rather than the Ju-Jitsu "go with > the flow", trying to beat it into submission rather than using its > strengths. Your remarks about CLI/GUI illustrate this: the shell is a > very powerful tool and small scripts, one liners, trigger driven actions > and such are part of what Linux is and what makes it so superior to > Windows. If you stay in denial about using them, if you insist that > security is getting in your way rather than making you focus, then you > are going to be beset by "problems" than the rest of us simply don't > encounter. > > In short, you are making life difficult for yourself by not 'going with > the flow". Making everything world writeable, using SAMBA instead of > NFS are illustrations of the technical aspect of this. Anton - I think the time has come for you and I to simply agree to disagree with each other. Like religious argumentation, I think we each have a view that does not comprehend the others. My understanding of your view is that you believe users should be forced into complying with and accomplishing their tasks in the "Linux way", which I don't think is easy to grok and narrow minded. I believe computers should be adaptable, with consistent easy to understand tools and models, that allow the user to easily adapt the tools they see and are familiar with, to new situations. I do NOT understand the reasoning behind having an inconsistent security model that on the one hand easily allows me to set the file/directory permissions such that I can push or pull files across a network to/from internal drives, but am restricted from doing so when it comes to attached external USB drives. Conceptually, for a user, there should be no difference in the security model being used to control access to either type of drive, they simply hold a file system, and the OS has the responsibility to make the security model consistent and transparent to the user. Yes, I probably could follow your suggestions of setting up a staging process for moving files across. We could use a central repository, such as CVS, but then I face the prospect of having to teach my wife, and family members how to use it. (or any other file management system for that matter.) They understand the simple ideas behind cp and mv, drag and drop, how to navigate our network, etc along with the concept of storing data on the external USB drives. Getting my wife, or 75 year old mother to work (who uses Windoz instead, but cannot put anything directly on my USB drive either) with anything more complicated will be asking way too much of them! NOT gonna happen! I came to this mail list seeking a way to solve this permissions problem with external USB drives, in such a way that would allow all of us to continue to use the tools we all understand, while letting this model of file transfer remain transparent and consistent to them. I understand the risks of reducing security, and wouldn't do so IF and WHEN it did NOT block usability. I mitigate this some by doing automatic backups of all our systems, every night, including the attached USB drives if they are attached at the time the backup job is ran. (We use Bacula, and it gets around the issue of assessing USB drives by having a client daemon run locally on each system and only one central server, Since the clients are local processes they can access the local USB drive without any problem, just like a local user can). I don't think my systems are all that messed up either, I just did a fresh install of openSuSE11.3 on two of my systems here, and with just NFS set up, using just the default settings that YaST2 set the NFS server up with, I am still unable to access a USB drive that is connected to these systems, from the other system, across the network. I remain convinced that there is some security setting somewhere that is preventing (write) access to a USB drive from across the network. Why going through a Samba autofs mount point allows read access only when reaching the USB drive, and going though an NFS autofs mount allows neither, is beyond my grok capabilities at the moment.. To me, they both should have just worked and chmod/chown should have been sufficient to handled the settings of access permissions. Simple as that.... IF chmod/chown had worked, then I might look further to see how to add users, coming from other computers, across the network, to a group and further tightened security access. But adding network users to a group is something I have yet to figure out how to do... I appreciate all your time Anton and suggestions. And yes perhaps I am being stubborn, but unless you, or anyone else, can come up with a solution on how to mount USB drives so they can be writable, from across the network, I think it is time to call it a day and we will just continue to live with this problem... Marc... P.S. BTW the Western Digital's "My Passport" USB disk drives ARE rotating magnetic media and NOT flash drives. As such they are just as robust as internal disk drives, very fast, and can perform lots of read/write operations. I even run openSuSE off of an external eSata/USB Seagate drive (it can be either, just requires a different cable/head) and it too is a rotating magnetic media. USB drives are not necessarily flash nor slow any more. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] DHCPv6 config
by James Knott 06 Feb '11

06 Feb '11

I've just installed the DHCPv6 package, which includes both client and server. While I can find /etc/dhcp6s.conf, I don't see anything in Yast2>Network Services for DHCP6 configuration. The DHCP v4 server is there. I'm running 11.3. tnx jk -- 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: [opensuse ] How do I mount USB drive world writable using device notifier?
by Anton Aylward 06 Feb '11

06 Feb '11

Marc Chamberlin said the following on 02/06/2011 01:12 AM: > > During testing, when trying to mount from a command line following your > instructions, I disabled these automatic mount settings, and even > removed the device notifier widget since it appeared at first that is > was still automounting the USB drive when I plugged it in... (even > though I had unchecked these settings.. I found later that after a > reboot however, the device notifier was no longer automounting the USB > drive when I plugged it in, so apparently those settings don't take > effect immediately...) The device notifier is just that. The automounting is a feature of the kernel and the hardware interface. The device notifier is to notify you and let you choose what tool to run on the mounted device depending on what it is -- data, pictures, audio. It is a user and KDE level function. Removing it will not affect the automounting. This automounting is to do with hardware and call-back to the user space from the hardware layer and kernel, and nothing to do with the automounter and maps. Please don't fiddle with it. -- Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. -- Aristotle -- 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: [opensuse ] How do I mount USB drive world writable using device notifier?
by Marc Chamberlin 06 Feb '11

06 Feb '11

On 2/4/2011 2:26 PM, Anton Aylward wrote: > <stuff deleted> > You said you and your wife both use Linux. > So use the Linux network file sharing tools: > NFS. > > Its going to be simpler. Thanks again Anton for your quick reply. I have set up the NFS server on all my Linux systems, and can for the most part now navigate around Linux filesystems via the auto mounted files defined for autofs. I have also left the Samba server running, for the moment, until I can figure out how to use NFS to mount Windoz shares and v.s get Windoz machines to see Linux exported files. (Future project... ) That said, even using NFS to navigate to the mounted USB drive on her laptop, or v.s. for her to navigate to my USB drive, we hit an even worse roadblock. The moment we try to cd into the mounted drive, we can't even get permission to see what is there. I can demonstrate this - Here I cd via a samba mount to the USB drive on my laptop, from my server (or wife's laptop if you like, same results) cd /mnt/samba/marcslaptop/slash/media/My\ Passport/ marc@bigbang:/mnt/samba/marcslaptop/slash/media/My Passport> ls Autorun.inf FOUND.000 FOUND.002 PortableApps StartPortableApps.exe WD Stuff Documents FOUND.001 FOUND.003 $RECYCLE.BIN System Volume Information and I can list out the contents of the top level directory,though I cannot write to it from across the network. Here I tried to cd via a NFS mount to the USB drive on my laptop, and I am not even allowed to get there. Looks like more d$#*m Linux security is blocking me! marc@bigbang:~> cd /mnt/nfs/marcslaptop/slash/media/My\ Passport/ bash: cd: /mnt/nfs/marcslaptop/slash/media/My Passport/: Permission denied <more stuff deleted> > Now here comes the part where I cheat. > > I decided that the the name<->uid on all my machines should be the same. > So files owned by anton on server have the same uid number as files > owned by anton on the laptop. I don't have to worry about remapping. > > You could cheat by having your uid on your laptop as the same as your > wife's uid on her laptop. > > Of course that leads to problems when you log in as yourself (different > uid) on her laptop and try to access files on your laptop :-) > > This is the most transparent, the simplest way I can think of setting up > file sharing. I checked my UID on all my systems, including my wife's, using the ID command. It happens to be the same - 1000 cuz I am typically the first user set up on each system.. > SAMBA was designed for sharing files with Windows machines. > As you and your wife are both running Linux it is completely inappropriate. > >> Anywise, after we have our laptops up and running, we will plug in our >> external USB drives, and use the KDE device notifier to mount them. They >> get mounted at - /media/MyPassport for example. There is nothing in >> our /etc/fstab that defines this mounting AFAIK, though some of what is >> in fstab is obtuse to me. > The manual page is correct but terse. > You might try right-button when you mouseover the KDE device notifier. > You will see an option for configuration settings. > You can set the automounting options. The only setting I could find, for the device notifier, were settings which control when an auto-mountable device can be mounted. Nothing about where, or permissions associated with said device. (IMHO this is a sadly overlooked set of features that SHOULD be configurable right within that device notifier's configuration panel!!) >> And I have no idea why the /media directory >> was chosen as the place where to mount our USB drives, it was only >> through using grep that I was able to figure out that this was where it >> got mounted. > I hope you mean 'find' and not 'grep' :-) I did, mental cog slipped on me... > I can see why it seems odd, but it is a > "removable *media*" > device we are talking about. > That's ok with me, I just WISH the device notifier would have told me, and even better, made it a user settable parameter.... >> In your reply you referred to one line in the fstab file that I also >> found in mine - >> >> usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs >> noauto 0 0 >> >> so I did some experiments, but this is somewhat obtuse to me also, so >> not sure if I did these right - >> >> usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs >> noauto,defaults 0 0 >> >> and from what I could grok out of the man page for mounting usbfs file >> systems, I took the following wild guess (and various permutations) >> >> usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs >> noauto,devmode=0777,busmode=0777,listmode=0777 0 0 > A bit over aggressive, but I see your intent. > I suspect you don't have device files (aka device nodes such as > /dev/tty1) on your usb device. Yeah, like I said, I am guessing on a lot of this.. This setting in particular just boggles my mind and leaves me shaking my head with wonder at how Linux gurus have come to love such obtuse parameters... I have NO idea what devmode, busmode, and listmode mean! Don't want to know, and don't want to have to learn. I just want an easy to use interface with a simple model on how to establish and set permissions! So yeah, I get aggressive about shutting off security whenever I encounter it. LOL > What you might want to do is try mounting from the command line with > options and see what you get > > # mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usbstick -o rw,nodev,noexec > > and play with the other items on that option list. > The above does it for me. > > That would correspond to > > usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto,rw,nodev,noexec 0 0 > I tried this (had to disable the device notifier in order to do so) an fooled around a bit with the parameters but so far no joy. One thing that is interesting is that it appears that if I try to access the USB drive from across the network, it become un-mountable afterwards. Neither umount nor the device notifier can unmount it, saying some process is still accessing it. I have been unable to track down just what process it thinks is still using it.... >> Now, what I want to be able to do is something like the following, to >> copy files from my laptop to my wife's USB drive - >> >> cp *.jpg >> /mnt/auto/wifesLaptop/slash/media/MyPassport/Documents/Pictures >> >> or for my wife to be able to use Dolphin to simply drag and drop >> pictures from her laptop to my USB drive using similar paths... > Which gets back to WHY? > > If you each have /home/<username>/share/ > NFS exported > and<otherusermachine>:/home/<otherusername>/share > NFS mounted on your /mnt/<otherusermachine>/<otherusername> > and a symlink from /home/<username>/<otherusername>/ to > /mnt/<otherusermachine>/<otherusername> > > then you can > > cp *.jpg ~/wifesname/Documents/Pictures/ > > TA-DAH! No not so easy. It is not simply a matter of copying images across, but to do so organizationally. I.E. certain pictures must go in certain folders, and not being able to do that efficiently and directly from across the network is a real PITA for us. > > I know that looks complicated written out like that, but is actually a > very simple and symmetrical pattern. And very easy to set up. > > Forget about the USB drives for the moment, get that simple NFS working. > > When you've got that working we can come back and think about the USB > issues. > Ok, like I said, I now have simple NFS working also. And I still cannot access the USB drive from across the network... This is a lot harder than it should be... sigh.. 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] how to reboot from an ssh install?
by Per Jessen 06 Feb '11

06 Feb '11

I'm installing a remote system over pxe+ssh - once the ssh access is ready, how do I reboot? Note, this is _before_ even starting yast or the installation. I simply want to rerun the bootup, starting with PXE. When I try 'reboot' I get this: box02:~ # reboot WARNING: could not determine runlevel - doing soft reboot (it's better to use shutdown instead of reboot from the command line) shutdown: /dev/initctl: No such file or directory shutdown: cannot execute /sbin/init shutdown: /dev/initctl: No such file or directory box02:~ # Broadcast message from root@pi02 (pts/0) (Fri Feb 4 12:17:02 2011): The system is going down for reboot NOW! box02:~ # But nothing happens. 'shutdown' also doesn't work. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (6.6°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] Re: [opensuse ] How do I mount USB drive world writable using device notifier?
by Marc Chamberlin 06 Feb '11

06 Feb '11

On 2/5/2011 6:13 PM, Anton Aylward wrote: > Marc Chamberlin said the following on 02/05/2011 08:37 PM: > >> The only setting I could find, for the device notifier, were settings >> which control when an auto-mountable device can be mounted. Nothing >> about where, or permissions associated with said device. > And where/what was that I right clicked on the KDE device notifier widget and selected "Device Notifier Settings" to bring up the popup dialog window. From there I have a selection of "General", "Device Actions", "Removable Devices", "Keyboard Shortcut" and "Share". The "Removable Devices" leads me to a panel which has settings for WHEN to automount a device. But none have settings for where or permissions.... I have checked "Enable automatic mounting of removable media" and "Automatically mount removable media when attached" Under "Device Overrides" I checked in the column "Automount on attach" for "My Passport" which is the device id for my USB disk. During testing, when trying to mount from a command line following your instructions, I disabled these automatic mount settings, and even removed the device notifier widget since it appeared at first that is was still automounting the USB drive when I plugged it in... (even though I had unchecked these settings.. I found later that after a reboot however, the device notifier was no longer automounting the USB drive when I plugged it in, so apparently those settings don't take effect immediately...) Marc.. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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Re: [opensuse] How do I mount USB drive world writable using device notifier?
by Marc Chamberlin 06 Feb '11

06 Feb '11

On 2/5/2011 5:57 PM, Anton Aylward wrote: > Marc Chamberlin said the following on 02/05/2011 08:37 PM: > >> That said, even using NFS to navigate to the mounted USB drive on her >> laptop, or v.s. for her to navigate to my USB drive, we hit an even >> worse roadblock. The moment we try to cd into the mounted drive, we >> can't even get permission to see what is there. I can demonstrate this - > Please explain why the cross-wise USB access is critical. > The examples you've given so far don't explain what the "critical > business process" is that requires you to transfer onto her USB stick > rather than into her "public for import export" directory. Anton, again thanks for your replies and thoughts. I see a bunch of replies from you so will try to address each.. As for purpose, I don't think that is important, but we are creating a database of old family pictures and want to categorize them by placing in different sub-directories. (along with other documents) Think about genealogy and family trees and you will get the idea. She works on some, I work on some.... When I get done with some work, I want to move the updates onto her USB drive and this data must be placed in appropriate or new directories as needed, and v.s. for her.. And we take our drives with us to work with other family members, hence the need for portability... > If having the file end up on the USB is critical, can't you do this: > > a) you: mv *.jpg ~/hers/importexportdir > b) she: mv ~/importexportdir/*.jpg /media/sdb1/Pictures/ Yes, but this is a PITA.. that is what we have so far been doing. > > I do recall your complaint about access permissions, but I think that > allowing someone unrestricted access to all of your machine is a formula > for acrimony. > > "Why did you delete that file on my machine" > "I didn't" > Yes you did" > "No I didn't" > "Of course you did, you're the only one who could" > "Well I didn't" > "You must have because I didn't". > ... I agree that reducing security is a risk. But usability is far more important! I think the security wonks keep forgetting that. If security measures prevent one from using their computers, without having to invest hours and hours of time to grok em, then that IS a serious problem! Do some internet searching sometimes and you will find out that a great many users become frustrated with all the security layers and models being used, both in Linux and Windoz. My attitude is to get the computer to a usable state first, THEN worry about security and notch it up as time and needs dictate and allow... The security models of Linux (and Windoz) are both inconsistent and extremely difficult to correct sometimes, and that can render a computer nearly unusable, or extremely difficult at best, for accomplishing some given task... (such as this one...) We have worked out a model on how we want to solve our problem, theoretically transferring files directly to USB drives should follow the model of, and be as easy to perform, as transferring files to internal hard drives. The computer (Linux) should assist the user in doing such a simple task, NOT make it difficult! 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] No more /boot on RAID1?
by Michael Fischer 06 Feb '11

06 Feb '11

Just installed SuSE 11.3 onto a machine with 2 disks in RAID1. Unlike the 11.1 machine on which I am typing this email, it wouldn't let me install grub, etc to /boot if that partition was RAID-ed. I found: http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/install-boot-log… But this confuses me. 11.1 let me "just do this", whereas 11.3 complains. Is it necessary to do the editing of grub or no? Was there some change in this respect between 11.1 and 11.3? I ended up making /boot non-raid, which is slightly unfortunate, as the point of RAID1 (for me anyway) is failover and its kind of nice to think that the bootloader and kernel are "protected" in the same way as /home, etc.. TIA. Michael -- Michael Fischer michael(a)visv.net -- 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 Weekly News 161 is out!
by Sascha Manns 05 Feb '11

05 Feb '11

We are pleased to announce: Issue 161 of openSUSE Weekly News is out! [0] For a list of available translations see this page: http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Weekly_news_translations [0] http://news.opensuse.org/?p=6537 (in HTML, Bento Theme) [0] http://www.saschamanns.de/pub/OWN/PDF/OWN-161.pdf (in PDF) [0] http://www.saschamanns.de/pub/OWN/HTML/OWN-161.html (in HTML, Susebooks Theme) -- Sincerely yours Sascha Manns open-slx.com openSUSE Community & Support Agent openSUSE Marketing Team Blog: http://saigkill.wordpress.com -- Sincerely Yours Sascha Manns open-slx Community & Support Agent openSUSE Membership Comitee openSUSE Marketing Team Blog: http://saigkill.wordpress.com German Community Portal: http://community.open-slx.de -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help(a)opensuse.org

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