On Sat, 2006-08-19 at 07:03 -0600, Darryl Gregorash wrote:

On 19/08/06 06:40, Hans van der Merwe wrote:

...

Im adding http://mirrors.kernel.org/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1/inst-source/suse/ to my install source. It takes forever.....

Should this not be just http://mirrors.kernel.org/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1/inst-source/ ?

Dont know? The source add works. Just the constant downloading of the filelist thats troublesome. E-Mail disclaimer: http://www.sunspace.co.za/emaildisclaimer.htm

On Sat, Aug 19, 2006 at 11:06:00AM -0400, suse@rio.vg wrote:

Hans van der Merwe wrote:

...

Im adding http://mirrors.kernel.org/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1/inst-source/suse/ to my install source. It takes forever..... After bit of sniffing I found that its downloading http://mirrors.kernel.org/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1/inst-source/suse/rep... this file is 17M; after its done I click Finish and then it downloads the file again!!, and again when I open Yast Software Management, and again when I click on the Update Manager thingy on the Panel. This is way to much downloading of the same file. I did uncheck the Refresh flag on the source.

Anyone else seeing this?

Welcome to the world of Zen/Rug. You can thank Novell for this little gem of a package management system. What you're seeing isn't a bug, but the way it was designed to work. At the last minute in 10.1's development, they scrapped the old working system for this one. Not only is it slow and inefficient, it can't even handle delta rpm's like the old system could. This is why many consider 10.1 to be a broken release. The initial release version of Zen/Rug wouldn't even update at all.

I recommend scrapping it entirely and moving to apt or smart for package management and using fou4s for updates.

fou4s: http://fou4s.gaugusch.at/ smart: http://labix.org/smart apt: (I don't have a link handy, but I think you can get it off ftp.suse.com)

This has nothing to do with it. The /suse/ is superflous, it will fallback to "old style" packages if not used, which is smaller. Also the source should be marked as "No refresh". Ciao, Marcus

On Sat, Aug 19, 2006 at 02:10:17PM -0800, John Andersen wrote:

On Saturday 19 August 2006 12:52, Marcus Meissner wrote:

...

On Sat, Aug 19, 2006 at 11:06:00AM -0400, suse@rio.vg wrote:

...

Hans van der Merwe wrote:

...

Im adding http://mirrors.kernel.org/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1/inst-source/sus e/ to my install source. It takes forever..... After bit of sniffing I found that its downloading http://mirrors.kernel.org/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1/inst-source/sus e/repodata/filelists.xml.gz this file is 17M; after its done I click Finish and then it downloads the file again!!, and again when I open Yast Software Management, and again when I click on the Update Manager thingy on the Panel. This is way to much downloading of the same file. I did uncheck the Refresh flag on the source.

Anyone else seeing this?

Welcome to the world of Zen/Rug. You can thank Novell for this little gem of a package management system. What you're seeing isn't a bug, but the way it was designed to work. At the last minute in 10.1's development, they scrapped the old working system for this one. Not only is it slow and inefficient, it can't even handle delta rpm's like the old system could. This is why many consider 10.1 to be a broken release. The initial release version of Zen/Rug wouldn't even update at all.

I recommend scrapping it entirely and moving to apt or smart for package management and using fou4s for updates.

fou4s: http://fou4s.gaugusch.at/ smart: http://labix.org/smart apt: (I don't have a link handy, but I think you can get it off ftp.suse.com)

This has nothing to do with it. The /suse/ is superflous, it will fallback to "old style" packages if not used, which is smaller.

Marcus:

Explain that a bit more please. WHAT will fall back to the old style?

The ftp source has 2 kind of repos. - SUSE Tags Source (old style), metadata is in: suse/setup/descr/packages* - YUM Source, metadata is in: suse/repodata/

Do you mean You will work again? Are you saying simply removing the /suse/ in the url will disable the whole ZEN/RUG abomination?

No. Ciao, Marcus

On Sat, Aug 19, 2006 at 06:13:10PM -0400, suse@rio.vg wrote:

Marcus Meissner wrote:

...

This has nothing to do with it. The /suse/ is superflous, it will fallback to "old style" packages if not used, which is smaller.

Are you trying to suggest that you didn't design the system so that it downloads large repo-data lists multiple times with no dialog or progress meter whatsoever leaving the user to think the whole thing has simply locked up? That may be fine when you're connected to the repo via lan, but did it ever occur to you that some poor shmuck might be on the other end of a modem on the other side of the planet?

You are using poor rhetorics and blame shifting. Yes, it is true that some operations lack progress bars and this is still one of them and where we will improve.

(And this is yet another instance where the old-style is superior to zen/rug: Size of the repo-data.)

Actually I guessed wrong:

ll suse/setup/descr/packages -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 17821172 2006-05-08 13:36 suse/setup/descr/packages ll suse/repodata/filelists.xml.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 17474199 2006-05-08 14:40 suse/repodata/filelists.xml.gz

...

Also the source should be marked as "No refresh".

The original poster said pointblank: "I did uncheck the Refresh flag on the source." And it *STILL* misbehaves. Here's an idea: Have the system download the file only if it is newer than the one currently on the system.

SuSE has set up their distribution so well in so many other places that it continually amazes me how little thought you all put into zen/rug.

Unfortunately the YUM repo format does not lend itself well to download optimizations with its large XML blobs. The installation source data should only downloaded once to your machine and cached there. (However I am not sure whether ZYPP does it right now.) The old YOU patches were better, with just the directory.3 file as small index. Ciao, Marcus

Hans du Plooy wrote:

On Sun, 2006-08-20 at 00:30 +0200, Marcus Meissner wrote:

...

The old YOU patches were better, with just the directory.3 file as small index.

So is there a way right now to get delta rpms for updates or some form of binary patch instead of downloading complete rpms? I just did a fresh install on my notebook, and have 400mb odd to download via apt. Over gprs this is going to hurt (both in time and in the bill at the end of the month).

I have the same problem with YOU - added the installation source, and it just hangs there. I left it over night, and by the next morning it was still not finished.

I believe the fou4s 0.15 beta will use delta rpms. http://fou4s.gaugusch.at/

Hans du Plooy writes:

On Sun, 2006-08-20 at 00:30 +0200, Marcus Meissner wrote:

...

The old YOU patches were better, with just the directory.3 file as small index.

So is there a way right now to get delta rpms for updates or some form of binary patch instead of downloading complete rpms? I just did a fresh install on my notebook, and have 400mb odd to download via apt. Over gprs this is going to hurt (both in time and in the bill at the end of the month).

OUr developers have been working on this and just finished the YOU integration (rug/zmd is not done). I plan to release a version for testing in my ftp dir soon.

I have the same problem with YOU - added the installation source, and it just hangs there. I left it over night, and by the next morning it was still not finished.

Did you apply our latest package manager updates? Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, aj@suse.de, http://www.suse.de/~aj/ SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126

On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 12:04:33AM -0800, John Andersen wrote:

On Sunday 20 August 2006 23:35, Andreas Jaeger wrote:

...

OUr developers have been working on this and just finished the YOU integration (rug/zmd is not done).  I plan to release a version for testing in my ftp dir soon.

What will this integration do to the functionality of YOU as we fondly remember it?

It will again support delta and patch RPMs. Ciao, Marcus

Andreas Jaeger wrote:

John Andersen writes:

...

What will this integration do to the functionality of YOU as we fondly remember it?

It will only enhance it.

Is that like "it's not a bug, it's a feature!"? Will it still take hours to load a new source tree? Do you understand that most of us don't have a lan connection to the repo? Will it still download and parse the ENTIRE TREE every single time you wake up zmd, even if you just wanted to quickly install something? Before you get too proud of this technological terror you've constructed, try it over a modem.

...

If I had my druthers, rug/zmd would be quite done. Its already dis-installed from this box.

Amen. I have installed three 10.1 boxen, and I've removed zen/rug from all of them.

Hans van der Merwe wrote:

What do you use? Im looking into Smart. What will work with SuSE GURU and Packman?

I use apt/synaptic for package management and fou4s for updates. Apt/synaptic works with packman and guru and a bunch of others. fou4s is just the suse repo, but it's just so nice to be able to stick in a nightly cron and have the report of the updates it downloaded the previous night waiting for install, and especially WHY those updates need to be performed (what holes are fixed, etc)

suse@rio.vg writes:

Andreas Jaeger wrote:

...

John Andersen writes:

...

What will this integration do to the functionality of YOU as we fondly remember it?

It will only enhance it.

Is that like "it's not a bug, it's a feature!"? Will it still take hours to load a new source tree? Do you understand that most of us don't have a lan connection to the repo? Will it still download and parse the ENTIRE TREE every single time you wake up zmd, even if you just wanted to quickly install something?

We already did a couple of optimizations with our latest update regarding download of metadata. AFAIK exactly these issues are not addressed as such. I'm always amazed how critical some bugs are once they're found - but how long it takes to find them and how long it takes to report them in bugzilla (I only found bug 200071 reporting this - and that's 4 days old). We addressed another issue - the downloading of packages. So, instead of downloading 100 MB of packages, you might need to download only a few MB, Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, aj@suse.de, http://www.suse.de/~aj/ SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126

Hans van der Merwe writes:

On Mon, 2006-08-21 at 16:26 +0200, Andreas Jaeger wrote:

...

suse@rio.vg writes:

...

Andreas Jaeger wrote:

...

John Andersen writes:

...

What will this integration do to the functionality of YOU as we fondly remember it?

It will only enhance it.

Is that like "it's not a bug, it's a feature!"? Will it still take hours to load a new source tree? Do you understand that most of us don't have a lan connection to the repo? Will it still download and parse the ENTIRE TREE every single time you wake up zmd, even if you just wanted to quickly install something?

We already did a couple of optimizations with our latest update regarding download of metadata.

AFAIK exactly these issues are not addressed as such. I'm always amazed how critical some bugs are once they're found - but how long it takes to find them and how long it takes to report them in bugzilla (I only found bug 200071 reporting this - and that's 4 days old).

We addressed another issue - the downloading of packages. So, instead of downloading 100 MB of packages, you might need to download only a few MB,

Andreas

What last update? I did an update 2 days ago and Im still downloading 17M files everytime zmd moves.

Read again above. We optimized a couple of issues - but this particular one not yet, it's the topic of bug 200071 only filed 4 days ago, Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, aj@suse.de, http://www.suse.de/~aj/ SUSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126

Is this possible? I'm getting off windows, and was wondering if I can stream to my airports from SUSE. Thanks in advance noticio.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sat August 19 2006 17:36, John Andersen wrote:

On Saturday 19 August 2006 15:38, suse@rio.vg wrote:

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 I know it's hard to abandon work that's already done, but at a certain point, there is more to be gained by starting from scratch than trying to repair a broken system.

Apparently not. They dumped YOU for no good reason the minute Mantel was pushed out the door.

The situation we have now is the product of a petty internal turf war by a bunch of Gnome-heads bound and determined to put their stamp on SuSE.

Pretty much my take on the situation. I feared this type of turn of events would play itself out when Novell took over SuSE. Losing Mantel was a shame - he was much of the driving force behind the "original" SuSE offering. When I read that Novell had acquired Ximian (the only halfway usable form of Gnome outside of RH - and I avoid RH) that perhaps we would see some sort of coherency from the GNOME camp. But then Novell acquired SuSE and I had a very definite impression that the merge of SuSE and Ximian/GNOME would be forth coming. The question that loomed in my mind was "is the GNOME desktop going to become more functional in the SuSE distro or will it supplant it? Seems they attempted to supplant it but the outcry from the list and loyal user as so loud and angrey that Novell backpedalled rather quickly. Then soon after this the announcement that Mantel was leaving! I have been using SuSE since 7.0 and worked for a while on the beta team as a tester. Lately, I have been seriously entertaining a switch to another distro. Now it seems that the suits are more please with SLED 10 and eWeek has even giving it an Editior Choice award (should be my 1st clue things are going in the wrong direction - eWeek is basically an outlet for corporate shills) - but the article pointed out the Ubuntu had a far better system for package installation and updates. They did a search for such common programs as Mozilla Thunderbird, kdissert, and even "checkinstall" and was unable to find it in any repository and determined that Unbuntu beat SuSE in this respect hands down. I fail to see how Novell would have a situation wherein commonly used programs are now unavailable. Furthermore, Novell has moved all the software formerly on SuSE's German ftp site to a host of mismashed repositories - and half of these don't work or are fragments of their former selves. So, it seems, that if this trend continues my fears that Novell will make SuSE Linux a SuSE distro in name only with little, if any, resemblance to what drew me (and many others) to SuSE in the first place a reality. Pity. IMHO it is going the route that Mandrake did - and we all know what happened there. I hope that Novell doesn't kill SuSE they way they have in their previous products - Lotus and NetWare who???? Cheers, Curtis. - -- Spammers Beware: Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again! "The only problem with capitalism is capitalists, they're so damn greedy!" President Herbert Hoover -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFE6BX67CQBg4DqqCwRAqrcAKCKbedYinWv6+iqnX+dczSSmyTmVACdHux+ yaf625rpATP2+e8Cn3NKrUs= =43mX -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Saturday 19 August 2006 14:30, Marcus Meissner wrote:

On Sat, Aug 19, 2006 at 06:13:10PM -0400, suse@rio.vg wrote:

...

Marcus Meissner wrote:

...

This has nothing to do with it. The /suse/ is superflous, it will fallback to "old style" packages if not used, which is smaller.

Are you trying to suggest that you didn't design the system so that it downloads large repo-data lists multiple times with no dialog or progress meter whatsoever leaving the user to think the whole thing has simply locked up? That may be fine when you're connected to the repo via lan, but did it ever occur to you that some poor shmuck might be on the other end of a modem on the other side of the planet?

You are using poor rhetorics and blame shifting.

Tell us where the blame belongs and we will focus our attention somewhere other than on you Marcus. ;-) Your problem is you are conveniently "here". -- _____________________________________ John Andersen

On Sunday 20 August 2006 00:03, Marcus Meissner wrote:

...

Your problem is you are conveniently "here".

I am angry the same way you are, being the security guy who has to use this framework :/

I hope you understand no one is blaming you. Most of us think you've got a lot of stones to stand in here an catch the flack and still be helpful and polite.

- We needed to incorporate ZEN to have a concise remote management   solution for SLE, our large customers just want this.

Psssst: Marcus: Nobody gives a rip about Zen. Nobody can even understand it. You read the leaden descriptions about what it is supposed to do and you come away shaking your head in despair. Its a solution in desperate search of a problem. Even Novell has not successfully implemented it in house on a corporate scale. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen

On Sunday 20 August 2006 03:30, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

Even Novell has not successfully implemented it in house on a corporate scale.

explain?

Take the sentence as give. Parse according to standard english rules. It means what it says. A month of 4 ago, an interview in an issue of one of the linux rags with some Novell corporate exec indicated that they had not been able to make Zen work reliably corporate wide either for Netware OR SLES. I'm sorry, I just don't have access to the source anymore. But Zenworks' emphasis is on management of large and widely distributed networks, with less emphasis on updates to the underlying OS. It would not seem wise or necessary to replace a working package maintenance tool with a broken one in those installations. It seems less wise to foist Zen on the small market version of your distro and suffer the slings and arrows of thousands of small single server users and home users. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen

On Sunday 20 August 2006 09:03, Marcus Meissner wrote:

On Sat, Aug 19, 2006 at 05:19:27PM -0800, John Andersen wrote:

...

On Saturday 19 August 2006 14:30, Marcus Meissner wrote:

...

On Sat, Aug 19, 2006 at 06:13:10PM -0400, suse@rio.vg wrote:

...

Marcus Meissner wrote:

...

This has nothing to do with it. The /suse/ is superflous, it will fallback to "old style" packages if not used, which is smaller.

Are you trying to suggest that you didn't design the system so that it downloads large repo-data lists multiple times with no dialog or progress meter whatsoever leaving the user to think the whole thing has simply locked up? That may be fine when you're connected to the repo via lan, but did it ever occur to you that some poor shmuck might be on the other end of a modem on the other side of the planet?

You are using poor rhetorics and blame shifting.

Tell us where the blame belongs and we will focus our attention somewhere other than on you Marcus. ;-)

Your problem is you are conveniently "here".

I am angry the same way you are, being the security guy who has to use this framework :/

The problem is that there is no one good to blame, since all can be explained by rational decisions in the end.

- We needed to change and enhance the package handling. mostly for multiple repositories, the easy ability to have add-on products, integration of the "update" mechanism with the regular package manager.

- We needed to incorporate ZEN to have a concise remote management solution for SLE, our large customers just want this.

It was also an attempt to bring ZEN internally closer to YAST.

It worked to some degree, but there are problems to be worked out.

- Timing :/ We could not delay until it was as (quality) ready as we would have liked it, mostly we could not delay SUSE Linux any longer

Ciao, Marcus

In That case then suse should have been released using the tried and trusted Yast not this hotch potch collection of odes and ends called ZEN or whatever it is is Pete .

On Sunday 20 August 2006 15:29, Chris Herrnberger wrote:

Hay my main bitch with a smile is that since 5.2 I could point yast to any directory on my machine, remote or local and include the directory as a yast source, however more typically used on my own machine. Now I have to create a yast repository, and go to all that work, just to include an existing directory on my laptop say for example the latest KDE just to ensure that all dependencies are addressed. Used to be as simple as point an click (and since 5.2) Now its a half hour exercise.

YaST1 could do that, and for a long time YaST2 couldn't. But in the later releases, you have the possibility to add a "local directory" as an installation source in YaST, and it will take it even if it isn't in repository format (IOW it's just a directory of rpms) From the command line, it's "rug mount /path/to/dir <name>" and it gets added as an installation source

On Sunday 20 August 2006 03:46, Anders Johansson wrote:

On Sunday 20 August 2006 15:29, Chris Herrnberger wrote:

...

Hay my main bitch with a smile is that since 5.2 I could point yast to any directory on my machine, remote or local and include the directory as a yast source, however more typically used on my own machine. Now I have to create a yast repository, and go to all that work, just to include an existing directory on my laptop say for example the latest KDE just to ensure that all dependencies are addressed. Used to be as simple as point an click (and since 5.2) Now its a half hour exercise.

YaST1 could do that, and for a long time YaST2 couldn't. But in the later releases, you have the possibility to add a "local directory" as an installation source in YaST, and it will take it even if it isn't in repository format (IOW it's just a directory of rpms)

From the command line, it's "rug mount /path/to/dir <name>" and it gets added as an installation source

Is it possible to use Yast in 10.1 in the same way as 10.0? Thanks, Jerome

On Thu, Aug 24, 2006 at 08:51:00AM +0200, Hans van der Merwe wrote:

On Wed, 2006-08-23 at 13:03 -1000, Susemail wrote:

...

On Sunday 20 August 2006 03:46, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

On Sunday 20 August 2006 15:29, Chris Herrnberger wrote:

...

Hay my main bitch with a smile is that since 5.2 I could point yast to any directory on my machine, remote or local and include the directory as a yast source, however more typically used on my own machine. Now I have to create a yast repository, and go to all that work, just to include an existing directory on my laptop say for example the latest KDE just to ensure that all dependencies are addressed. Used to be as simple as point an click (and since 5.2) Now its a half hour exercise.

YaST1 could do that, and for a long time YaST2 couldn't. But in the later releases, you have the possibility to add a "local directory" as an installation source in YaST, and it will take it even if it isn't in repository format (IOW it's just a directory of rpms)

From the command line, it's "rug mount /path/to/dir <name>" and it gets added as an installation source

Is it possible to use Yast in 10.1 in the same way as 10.0?

Well, mostly yes. Depends on what specific feature you need. Ciao, Marcus

On Thu, 2006-08-24 at 11:16 -0400, BandiPat wrote:

On Thursday 24 August 2006 02:51, Hans van der Merwe wrote: [...]

...

I would also like to know - I have uninstalled rug and zmd (it was just hammering my HD and internet connection). Im looking into Smart now. Looks promising, but YaST software manager was one of the reasons for me to switch from Fedora to SUSE.

E-Mail disclaimer: http://www.sunspace.co.za/emaildisclaimer.htm

-------------------

I would think having come from Fedora that Yum would be your main tool for such things. If you're using KDE, you might want to look at KYum, the gui for YUM or yumex, with a gtk interface.

All in all yum is proving to be easy to use and stable for me.

regards, Lee

Ye my Fedora days were very short, the YaST GUI was so beautiful and easy to use that my desire to look for GUIs for Yum faded. But as I understand it has come a long way. KYum looks good. E-Mail disclaimer: http://www.sunspace.co.za/emaildisclaimer.htm

On Wed, 2006-08-23 at 02:21 -0400, Chris Herrnberger wrote:

On Sunday 20 August 2006 09:29, Chris Herrnberger wrote:

...

I am no longer clear on the product lineup and target audiences.

Answering my own questions...:)

See if interested; http://www.novell.com/news/press/item.jsp?id=1082

which if I interpret it correctly means the boxed set is history. Or are they just dropping the SuSE LINUX 10.x name...? I read it as still a boxed set of "openSuSE".

"Available for free download or in the convenient packaged retail edition, openSUSE delivers reliability and security at an affordable price. The openSUSE.org project has more than 30,000 registered members, and SUSE Linux 10.1 (now openSUSE) recently topped 350,000 verified installations since its launch in May." Sure hope I'm correct, it's pretty hard to squeeze the boxed set through a modem! Tom

On Wednesday 23 August 2006 08:21, Chris Herrnberger wrote:

On Sunday 20 August 2006 09:29, Chris Herrnberger wrote:

...

I am no longer clear on the product lineup and target audiences.

Answering my own questions...:)

See if interested; http://www.novell.com/news/press/item.jsp?id=1082

which if I interpret it correctly means the boxed set is history.

The following <quote> openSUSE is created by the openSUSE.org project, the Novell-sponsored community initiative that promotes the use of Linux everywhere, especially among traditionally non-technical audiences with a retail boxed product. Available for free download or in the convenient packaged retail edition, openSUSE delivers reliability and security at an affordable price. </quote> would seem to say otherwise. As far as I'm aware, it's a name change, I haven't heard anything else

Marcus Meissner wrote:

I am angry the same way you are, being the security guy who has to use this framework :/

I should explain, and maybe this is an issue with language, but when I say "you", I mean you "collectively", not you personally. I don't know about German, but I know some languages use different words for these two, unfortunately, English does not. So when I said "you", I was referring to SuSE collectively. Honestly, I did not know what your position was. Though, I will take this opportunity to congratulate you on the great work on the security side of things. I've always liked the SuSE security model, and with AppArmor, I do believe that SuSE 10.1 strikes the best balance between security and usability of any distro in the world.

The problem is that there is no one good to blame, since all can be explained by rational decisions in the end.

- We needed to change and enhance the package handling. mostly for multiple repositories, the easy ability to have add-on products, integration of the "update" mechanism with the regular package manager.

Why were apt and smart rejected? Both are mature systems that provide this functionality.

- We needed to incorporate ZEN to have a concise remote management solution for SLE, our large customers just want this.

Let me suggest, then, that you have zen be an OPTION, for those environments that use it, rather than the default.

It was also an attempt to bring ZEN internally closer to YAST.

Instead, it broke yast.

It worked to some degree, but there are problems to be worked out.

It plain *did not work* at release. It has since been patched to mostly function, but honestly, not tinkering is going to fix this abomination.

- Timing :/ We could not delay until it was as (quality) ready as we would have liked it, mostly we could not delay SUSE Linux any longer

Why not simply ship 10.1 with the old YOU, then? I don't understand why zen/rug was required to be in 10.1, since it obviously wasn't ready. Why not simply wait for 10.2 or SLES 10? I think this is one of our greatest fears as sysadmins. We're really worried that Novell considers OpenSuSE to be a beta-test dumping ground for SLES, much like Fedora is for RedHat. There are thousands of people like me, sysadmins that work for small IT shops or underfunded departments of larger ones. We're the ones that brought linux into the corporate world through the back door. We don't have the budget for SLES/SLED yearly contract commitments. This is especially true since many of us are looking to Xen virtual machines, or have already begun to implement them. If we have to look at every OpenSuSE release with suspicion: "What did Novell break on this release?", we'll switch to another distro.

Marcus Meissner wrote:

...

Why were apt and smart rejected? Both are mature systems that provide this functionality.

I do not know. We had kinda strict requirements on Patches, Add On Product handling, which might not have been fulfilled by those.

Obviously not strict enough... You might want to ask the decision makers in that group whether or not they are suffering from "not invented here" syndrome. I suspect their requirements for something developed outside their office are far stricter than something written by one of their own.

...

Why not simply ship 10.1 with the old YOU, then? I don't understand why zen/rug was required to be in 10.1, since it obviously wasn't ready. Why not simply wait for 10.2 or SLES 10?

SLES 10 is using the SUSE Linux 10.1 codestream, so both are interlocked releases.

I don't understand... Is OpenSuSE going to be just "cut wherever we are in SLES development and ship, regardless of what's broken"?

...

I think this is one of our greatest fears as sysadmins. We're really worried that Novell considers OpenSuSE to be a beta-test dumping ground for SLES, much like Fedora is for RedHat.

Frankly said, to some degree it is a ground of introduction new features which we will use in later products.

I think the question is really "to what degree"... If OpenSUSE is simply a good distro with SLES feeding off of it, that's great. If OpenSUSE is "we'll throw whatever software we feel like at it and let the user test it for us", that's a problem. If OpenSUSE is solid, with SLES being "more solid", that's great. Of course, there are always fairly obscure things that could be missed in OpenSUSE's quicker release schedule that is fixed in time for SLES, that's only to be expected.

It also is a stable community release done every 8 months.

I think we have different definitions of "stable" if 10.1 is the benchmark.

...

If we have to look at every OpenSuSE release with suspicion: "What did Novell break on this release?", we'll switch to another distro.

As said multiple times, I personally hope that we will not do it again (and there is not much potential to do so anyway).

I hope so, too. We're honestly not here to argue with you personally, but to ask, perhaps even beg, that you take what we're saying to Novell and make them understand that if they treat OpenSUSE as a bastard stepchild, people will abandon SuSE entirely, in droves. Look at Fedora. For a while, people kept using it because they'd used RedHat previously. Now it's being dropped left and right for Ubuntu. Every Ubuntu user is going to now recommend Ubuntu or its parent Debian at their workplace. Whereas RedHat used to be virtually synonymous with Linux here in the states, many of us are increasingly regarding it as irrelevant, left behind, and riding out on name recognition. Linux has always been about choice, and I'll be the first to admit that as a whole, we're an awfully fickle bunch. I still believe that right now, SuSE has the best technical release. But as I said, we're fickle, and many sysadmins will jump to another distro, even its technically lesser to suse, simply to have the piece of mind that they're not being screwed with by company execs.

On Sunday 20 August 2006 22:03, John Andersen wrote:

SuSE's 8 month release schedule has always been something of a mixed blessing. It kept your machines current when kernel development was fast and furious, but it is the bane of the corporate world, the very market that Marcus indicates is Novell's big concern.

Ubuntu is shouting about their Long Term Support, Quoting: "Ubuntu is freely available, including security updates for five years on servers, with no restrictions on usage and no requirement to purchase support contracts or subscriptions per deployment.".

In my market, (mostly small businesses) deploying SLES, which will be obsolete in two or three years VS Ubuntu with 5 years guaranteed support becomes harder to justify.

Not sure what you mean here. SLES has a guaranteed support life span of seven years

On Sunday 20 August 2006 14:20, suse@rio.vg wrote:

 Ubuntu is going incredibly far on sheer style points alone.

Ah, not fair. Ubuntu, and Kubuntu are goin far because they work out of the (digital) box and they keep themselves up to date. The only flaw I have found is that newly installed packages do not necessarily appear in the menu tree (kubuntu), and have to be added manually in many cases. As a server, this would hardly matter. Any other problems I've been having with Kubuntu have been due to _my_ unfamiliarity with Debian, so installing Spamassassin via Cpan and wiring it into mail delivery chain took a bit of digging, whereas with SuSE i know that process by heart. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen

On Monday 21 August 2006 00:20, suse@rio.vg wrote:

Anders Johansson wrote:

...

Not sure what you mean here. SLES has a guaranteed support life span of seven years

And it will cost $2,095 per server for those 7 years, just for the privilege of SLES. (Three years of updates for SLES is $873, one year is $349, vs. $0 for Ubuntu and Debian)

I was responding to John's comment about the life span of SLES. I'm not a sales guy, so I really don't want to get into a discussion about pricing.

You're missing the key. It's not SLES vs. Microsoft. It's SLES vs. OpenSUSE vs. Ubuntu vs. Debian. I certainly can't justify the extra thousands per server of SLES over the others to my boss.

The key is "certifications". If you want support from companies like Oracle, you need that, and those cost money.

OpenSUSE, if the trend of 10.1 continues, will be too suspect to run on production servers, just like Fedora. If that's the case, I'll be moving to Ubuntu or Debian, and so will an awful lot of others. I know of several that have already made the switch.

Between 10.1 and the announcement of GPL-only in OpenSUSE,

You talk about moving to Debian, and then in the next breath you complain that openSUSE consists of only open source (not just GPL by the way) software. Forgive me, but I fail to see the logic. What do you think Debian consists of? The "add-on" CD with third party software was available already during the beta phase for openSUSE, it just wasn't shipped along with it. I can't say exactly why, but I'd be willing to bet it has to do with licensing issues And openSUSE being developed in the open, you have every opportunity to test it as it's being put together, and raise your complaints while there is still time to do something about it. have you installed openSUSE 10.2 alpha yet?

On Monday 21 August 2006 02:07, suse@rio.vg wrote:

I'm not against the existance of SLES/SLED. Obviously, that support and those certifications cost money. For those that need it, they will spend the money. I am, however, against making OpenSUSE simply a cvs snapshot of SLES, which is what 10.1 is. If OpenSUSE cannot be trusted to provide proper, stable releases that each improve on their predecessors, then what's the point? Why should anyone install it? It's just giving Novell free beta testing at our own expense.

What part of 10.1 *aside from the updater* do you feel is so horrible? The update system was a mistake that I sincerely hope will never happen again, but can you honestly say that the rest of the system is as bad as all that? I've been running 10.1 here on all my machines since somewhere around beta 8 or so, and I have experienced no problems

...

And openSUSE being developed in the open, you have every opportunity to test it as it's being put together, and raise your complaints while there is still time to do something about it.

Really? And for how long of 10.1's testing phase was zen/rug tested with the new repo's?

It was introduced in beta 3

How "open" was the decision to rip out a time-tested superior system and replace it with a Novell-branded system that was specifically designed to work better ONLY with the rather expensive Novell ZenWorks system, that few if any user of OpenSUSE is likely to have, just because it was planned for SLES/SLED?

Well, that's not exactly true. It works better with anything that is not a YaST repository, because YaST as it was couldn't handle those at all. One of the nice things about the new system is that it can handle just about any repository format, making it far easier for regular users to create their own repositories It also solves one of the single most requested features of YaST ever, namely that if you install a package that has received an online update since the release, you now get the updated package immediately (assuming a working connection to the update repository, of course). That is something YaST has never been able to do, you always had to install the original release, and then run an update zmd is broken by implementation, not by design But you are of course right that it was a huge mistake, doing it the way it was done, there is no escaping that.

...

have you installed openSUSE 10.2 alpha yet?

What's the point? At any time, Novell could completely replace things at it's whim, just before release, even at the release candidate phase. It's already done so. OpenSUSE is not "open", it's simply visible. If I were to submit a patch to replace zen/rug with the old system, do you honestly believe that it would be in the release, even though by every technical definition it would be superior to the Novell-branded abomination currently in use?

First of all, it wouldn't be better "in every technical definition", as I mentioned above. The old system was always broken and needed replacement sooner or later. Go back in the archives of this list to before the takeover and count the complaints. Why do you think so many people started using fou4s or apt4rpm? Secondly, no, I don't think a "rip this out and replace it" would have been heeded. I do think bug reports showing the problems would have had an effect though.

Anders Johansson wrote:

What part of 10.1 *aside from the updater* do you feel is so horrible? The update system was a mistake that I sincerely hope will never happen again, but can you honestly say that the rest of the system is as bad as all that?

Aside from the entire package management system, nothing. I've said as much before. The problem is not just the fact that the system was shipped broken and is poorly designed, but what it REPRESENTS. When I asked earlier why it was done this way, the answer was straightforward: Because Novell demanded ZenWorks integration. When asked why it was in 10.1 when it clearly wasn't ready: Because 10.1 was a beta for SLES, and they weren't going to delay 10.1's release.

...

Really? And for how long of 10.1's testing phase was zen/rug tested with the new repo's?

It was introduced in beta 3

Is that really true? Note, I said "tested with the new repo's". From what I've been told, zen/rug was introduced in beta 3, but the new repo format was never tested outside of Novell. That's why when 10.1 was actually released, zen/rug did not update AT ALL.

...

How "open" was the decision to rip out a time-tested superior system and replace it with a Novell-branded system that was specifically designed to work better ONLY with the rather expensive Novell ZenWorks system, that few if any user of OpenSUSE is likely to have, just because it was planned for SLES/SLED?

Well, that's not exactly true. It works better with anything that is not a YaST repository, because YaST as it was couldn't handle those at all. One of the nice things about the new system is that it can handle just about any repository format, making it far easier for regular users to create their own repositories

It's doesn't work WELL with ANY repo. It doesn't work well, PERIOD. You can TRY pointing it at other repo's, but whether it will actually work at all whenever you add a repo is a coin toss. The prolonged waiting period every time you bring up the software management may or may not end. Even when it's working properly, on any non-local repo, you have to wait... and wait... and wait...

It also solves one of the single most requested features of YaST ever, namely that if you install a package that has received an online update since the release, you now get the updated package immediately (assuming a working connection to the update repository, of course). That is something YaST has never been able to do, you always had to install the original release, and then run an update

And the entire system had to be utterly broken in order to accommodate this one feature?

zmd is broken by implementation, not by design

I strongly disagree. See the previous posts about it repeatedly downloaded the repodata. See how it resides in memory, taking upwards of five minutes of throttling your machine every time it is "woken up". What part of it's design is good?

But you are of course right that it was a huge mistake, doing it the way it was done, there is no escaping that.

And have we been given a single indication that the abomination will be removed and replaced with something that, you know, works? Or how about that Novell won't pull the same crap again? As I've said before, 10.2 will be the make-or-break moment for SUSE. Will it be a good system that had one bad release, or is it the bastard stepchild of SLES?

...

What's the point? At any time, Novell could completely replace things at it's whim, just before release, even at the release candidate phase. It's already done so. OpenSUSE is not "open", it's simply visible. If I were to submit a patch to replace zen/rug with the old system, do you honestly believe that it would be in the release, even though by every technical definition it would be superior to the Novell-branded abomination currently in use?

First of all, it wouldn't be better "in every technical definition", as I mentioned above. The old system was always broken and needed replacement sooner or later. Go back in the archives of this list to before the takeover and count the complaints.

Read the list here and count the complaints about the new system.

Why do you think so many people started using fou4s or apt4rpm?

While fou4s has always been superior as an updater for servers, I never even considered bothering with apt until 10.1. Now, I recommend it heartily. More people have been using apt and smart on 10.1 than any previous release, because those previous releases had a package manager that, you know, worked.

Secondly, no, I don't think a "rip this out and replace it" would have been heeded. I do think bug reports showing the problems would have had an effect though.

Like what? I hear vague promises of "improvements" but I don't believe any amount of bug fixing is going to make zen/rug into a good system. The design is incredibly inefficient and subpar to current available solutions like apt and smart. Just earlier in this thread, it was pointed out that the zen/rug repodata, when gzip'd, was roughly the same size as the UNCOMPRESSED previous system. What about zen/rug is so superior to apt/synaptic or smart for package management and fou4s for keeping a server up to date?

What part of 10.1 *aside from the updater* do you feel is so horrible? The update system was a mistake that I sincerely hope will never happen again, but can you honestly say that the rest of the system is as bad as all that?

Don't know horrible or not, but Xen configuration in Yast IS half baked. Sambas' is too. need more?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sun August 20 2006 13:03, John Andersen wrote:

Many of my smaller customers just buy the boxed set of SuSE instead of SLES. I am facing such an install now, where I have to decide if I want to put SuSE 9.3 on the server, or Ubuntu.

SuSE 10.1 is just broken, and totally out of the question.

9.3 is old, but rock solid.

9.3 is fairly solid. I'm running OpenSuSe 10.0 and it has some issues, but nowhere near what seem to be rearing it's ugly head in 10.1 - so I'm in the middle ground here I guess. 10.0 is the first non-boxed set I've ever run and I'm glad I didn't slap any money down for the latest and greatest - I'd hate myself if I'd bought the latest SuSE boxed set (10.1?) considering how broken everyone say it is

Ubuntu is a bit of a learning curve for me, but offers a promise of stability for my customers.

My first Linux OS what the old Corel Linux - deb distro. Back in the day it was particularly challenging since Linux was still in its infancy and support was flat out missing in many areas (had to compile my own nic drivers from scratch back then - often dicey). Now, however, Debian is much more user friendly and has many more available programs than most (if not all) rpm based distros. Furthermore, if you'll recall, many people grumble about the slow pace of debian releases (or use to anyway). The reason they take longer to release newer version is because they tend to be more anal about bug hunts and shake outs. Debian has a rep for being rock solid in many respects. Sure it's a bit of a learning curve, but for those that have some previous Linux experience it's not that hard to get up to speed. You do need to give a little more thought to the manner in which you update packages however. Back in the day apt-get was the tool to use and it would grab whatever dependant packages needed during an upgrade to package X or Y. This would at times present problems, insofar that if you had a particular package needed by a program got upgraded due to dependancy requirements of something you upgraded, your program now wouldn't run or work right (crash or lock). I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't such a problem anymore. At least I bet that you might be able to find a program that would address this issue (synaptic frontend or something). The more I write about it the more curious I'm getting - but that would mean having to back up and write to a DVD, then wipe the hdd's and install. But Kubuntu (or Ubuntu with KDE installed on top later) sounds more and more interesting! I'm not ready to jump ship yet - I've spent a fair amount of time with SuSE and will give it the benefit of the doubt for now. I just hope that Novell doesn't drive this into the ground, that would very truly be a shame! Just my $0.02. Curtis. - -- Spammers Beware: Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again! "The only problem with capitalism is capitalists, they're so damn greedy!" President Herbert Hoover -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFE6UN+7CQBg4DqqCwRAtRpAJ9xk85k+J2A7eB3u50FahI6ePdMjQCeIBRb YFCD2kxt4orLUXzisxDJA/w= =EQkT -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Saturday 02 September 2006 05:06, Harshal Shah wrote:

when i work with lex & yacc on novelsuse 10 ent. i found that i can compile lexspecification file.l completely. It generates lee.yy.c . In other linux we are able to compile lex.yy.c with command

"$ cc lex.yy.c -ll " then we see output "./a.out" . but in novelsuse 10 this command ("$ cc lex.yy.c -ll ") is not working & showing error with collect2 id and not having "-ll" option.

We'll need the whole compilation/link error to know for sure. Try compiling without -ll, as that library contains only a stub main() routine which calls the lexer (if i recall correctly). Something to try: cc -o foo.o lex.yy.c If that works, the code compiles. Then try: cc -o foo foo.o If that fails, it's probably because your program doesn't have a main() routine. If that happens, you can try adding the following code to a separate file (main.c, taken from the flex info pages): #include main( int argc, char ** argv ) { ++argv, --argc; /* skip over program name */ if ( argc > 0 ) yyin = fopen( argv[0], "r" ); else yyin = stdin; yylex(); } compile that with: cc -o main.o main.c And link it to your flexer with: cc -o test main.o foo.o If that works, the problem is simply that you don't need -ll but you need to provide a main() routine to the flex-generated code.

suggest me what to do. how can i compile this in NovelSuse 10.

If you can send me the lex file off-list i can try it out on my 10.1 box. The problem may be related to differing flex versions on different environments. Distros are starting to ship versions of flex newer than 2.5.4, and not all of those releases actually generate compilable code. i believe that a collect2 error is a link error, though. -- ----- stephan@s11n.net http://s11n.net "...pleasure is a grace and is not obedient to the commands of the will." -- Alan W. Watts

On Sun, Aug 20, 2006 at 12:03:16PM -0800, John Andersen wrote:

On Sunday 20 August 2006 07:44, suse@rio.vg wrote:

...

Look at Fedora.  For a while, people kept using it because they'd used RedHat previously.  Now it's being dropped left and right for Ubuntu. Every Ubuntu user is going to now recommend Ubuntu or its parent Debian at their workplace.  Whereas RedHat used to be virtually synonymous with Linux here in the states, many of us are increasingly regarding it as irrelevant, left behind, and riding out on name recognition.

Your point is key.

SuSE's 8 month release schedule has always been something of a mixed blessing. It kept your machines current when kernel development was fast and furious, but it is the bane of the corporate world, the very market that Marcus indicates is Novell's big concern.

Err, the first 8 month schedule was for 10.1 ... Before that we had 6 months ;) and years (before 2001 I think) before we had 4 months.

Ubuntu is shouting about their Long Term Support, Quoting: "Ubuntu is freely available, including security updates for five years on servers, with no restrictions on usage and no requirement to purchase support contracts or subscriptions per deployment.".

Where is the money coming from? Please ask yourself this question. At some point in time Marks money might run out, or he might lose interest...

In my market, (mostly small businesses) deploying SLES, which will be obsolete in two or three years VS Ubuntu with 5 years guaranteed support becomes harder to justify.

How much is this Ubuntu long range product changing over its lifetime? I bet it does not change much. Ciao, Marcus

...

...

In my market, (mostly small businesses) deploying SLES, which will be obsolete in two or three years VS Ubuntu with 5 years guaranteed support becomes harder to justify.

How much is this Ubuntu long range product changing over its lifetime? I bet it does not change much.

Does SLES 10 change over its' lifetime?

It won't change much.

Personally, I don't know any small businesses that can afford SLES, or even medium size ones. It comes down to "1 SLES server or 2 Debian/openSUSE/etc Servers". It's rather hard to justify the cost, unless you're running massive applications like Oracle.

Depends on if you want to be able to get support from us or not ;) Ciao, Marcus

On Wednesday 23 August 2006 05:07, suse@rio.vg wrote:

I don't think many people are really looking to use Ubuntu in servers right now.  It's parent Debian has a much longer history.  The point of the Long Term Support right now is to see if it actually happens.  If they do support Dapper Drake for as long as they're saying, then the next LTS release, when Ubuntu is more mature, will be getting a munch harder look by sysadmins.

On the contrary. There are several portions of the US Government that have standardized on Debian, (most of the Linux in the FAA is Debian) and those guys (some of which I work with) were very happy to have Ubuntu come along with a slick installer. They could care less about Kubuntu. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen

On Sunday 20 August 2006 15:57, Marcus Meissner wrote:

...

...

- We needed to change and enhance the package handling.   mostly for multiple repositories, the easy ability to have add-on   products, integration of the "update" mechanism with the regular   package manager.

Why were apt and smart rejected?  Both are mature systems that provide this functionality.

I do not know. We had kinda strict requirements on Patches, Add On Product handling, which might not have been fulfilled by those.

From another post I read somewhere, I understand that one of the big issues with other systems was the lack of patch set handling. As a trivial example, when there is a kernel update, kernel-default, kernel-xen, and kernel-source are collectively bundled as a patch set, so they all get updated. This is not a glaring problem for most, as smaller scale users, but something that Novell needs to provide to the big corporates. It is not something provided by smart or apt. I would have preferred to see Novell pick up something like Smart and implement the missing features rather than create YAMPMS (Yet Another Meta Package Management System) but I suspect I know why. Novell need to create "value add" to sell their product, hence the whole ZENworks. They need to maintain control of this, and if they adopted an externally developed system they lose some degree of that control. -- Steve Boddy

Søndag 20 august 2006 00:50 skrev Tom Patton:

...

This has nothing to do with it. The /suse/ is superflous, it will fallback to "old style" packages if not used, which is smaller.

Also the source should be marked as "No refresh".

Ciao, Marcus

Sorry, hit the wrong button that time...

Marcus, are you suggesting there is a way to get YOU back without re-installing 9.3 perhaps? It seems mine is constantly downloading new catalogs, but I yet have found the first step of simply downloading the updates to the updater. Is this something I should do manually from the ftp site? I'll try that next, I guess, since I've tried almost every other suggestion on this forum along the line. Someone should write a simple "how-to" and put this entire subject to bed once and for all!

hear, hear !! I bought a 10.1 box. It's now collecting dust on the shelf. The CD's inside are of no use as they contain(??) the terrible YAST/YOU bug. Or is it fixed remotely, so that I can actually install (again) and get it working THIS time? I just attended a Novell First Class course on SLES10/SLED10. I really don't know what's going on inside the heads of the Novell suits, - but the SLED10 desktop is so far away from what (at least) european costumers are expecting, that (my guess) it'll never ever catch on. And mind you, Novell doesn't have that much ammo to spend on this matter...they can't afford the luxury of being fundamentally wrong that many times. I'm terribly disapointed with Novell as it stands. For the moment, I think (after all) that I've spent too many hours learing SuSE. So I can't just dump it. But, of course, one is keeping an eye on other distros, read Ubuntu...

This isn't friendly to us in the modem wastelands of New Mexico!

Thanks. Tom

-- ------------------------------ Med venlig hilsen/Best regards Verner Kjærsgaard