A couple of weeks ago I upgraded my Athlon XP workstation from SuSE Linux 7.3 to 8.2 using the upgrade tool on the Installation CD. It went smoothly and I made some notes on my experiences. ********* Good news ********* These things are fantastic :- Scanner ====== My UMAX 2200 USB scanner was recognized by sane (xsane) right out of the box. Joystick ======== My Saitek X45 USB Flight Controller worked right out of the box. No configuration at all. It was even calibrated nicely. Spamassassin ============ Now that SuSE have packaged this, it is well worth the little bit of effort to get it configured and running (but be careful with procmail) wvdial ====== Users can no longer use the wvdial command to go online with PPP. But no worry, qinternet is a great new tool (that uses wvdial behind the scenes.) 3D == XFree86 4.3.0 now installs drm 3D graphics on my ATI Rage Pro 128 card out of the box. So actually I needed to comment out the 'Chipset' option in my XF86Config because it was not compatible with the chipset strings in the new driver. ATI's fault imho for having dozens of different chipset ids for identical model numbers and functionality. (3D still locks up the card occasionally - at least with Racer set for lots of effects - the racer default - so if you have an ATI Rage 128 and prefer rock solid reliability, don't play 3D games and use the frame-buffer which has 2D acceleration afaik. I reduced the resolution, fog and fx settings in Racer and it works like a dream now.) sound ===== alsa 0.9 has a more sophisticated mixer for my Turtle Beach Santa Cruz than alsa 0.5, and is reputed to give much better support overall. I look forward to playing with it (it still sounds nice.) The machine no longer mutes and zeroes all the sliders on reboot, instead restoring the prior settings. And no more worries with missing modules (unlike a recent 2.4.18-SuSE kernel on 7.3) *************** Quite good news *************** And here are some steps on the learning curve (nothing too difficult):- Local mail relay - sendmail versus postfix, and procmail adventures =================================================================== I fixed a few problems with sendmail but was stumped by a mail loop it caused (mail bounced back to itself.) I gave up and replaced it with postfix. Unlike sendmail, it does not call the procmail mail delivery agent by default. There is an /etc/sysconfig/postfix option, POSTFIX_MDA, to change this. procmail gave me a little more trouble -- with my large mailbox. Again there was an /etc/sysconfig/postfix option -- POSTFIX_ADD_MAILBOX_SIZE_LIMIT which I needed to increase. SuSE's manuals no longer recommend using a mail server on standalone machines, and it is not covered by the installation support (purchase Advanced Support if you need it.) So I am pleased it still works for me. ** spamassassin - be very careful when installing this with postfix or sendmail, especially if you already use procmail - there is an old rule from the analog world "always read the directions before using power tools" - there is a thread last week that I started which delves into the consequences :-( Printing -- cups versus lpd =========================== YaST2 didn't seem to know that apsfilter should be replaced by lpdfilter (neither did I as it wasn't mentioned in the upgrade section of the manual - it is in the printing chapter of course.) Even with this done, lpd still wouldn't print so I switched to cups using the yast2 printer switcher. After running the switcher, YaST2 immediately ran the Printer Configuration Tool, which appeared to hang on "Initializing CUPS server..." 9% but /var/log/cups revealed the problem with tcp_wrappers Oddly, putting cupsd : ALL EXCEPT LOCAL in /etc/hosts.deny did not fix this (I guess I do not understand hosts.deny fully.) But putting cupsd : 127.0.0.1 in /etc/hosts.allow woke up YaST2 again (I did not restart YaST) and it made a fine set of print queues automatically (nice to see it using the stp drivers out of the box for my Epson Stylus Color 600 - the uniprint drivers that yast chose on 6.3/7.3 were great but the stp drivers from the gimp-print project are fantastic.) I could not print from my Windows laptop until I noticed that YaST2 didn't make a raw queue by default, but a few keystrokes in YaST2 made one. lilo ==== I am sure this is my fault. My /boot and root are both on IDE logical partitions. YaST didn't notice that lilo was installed on a logical partition (not recommended), and tried automatically to install lilo on the extended partition. This didn't work. Rerunning lilo from within YaST, this time specifying MBR, fixed this in seconds. ********************************************************************** Hope this is interesting for those following on the upgrade trail . I am really pleased with my updgraded workstation (which is also a simple print server, sshd server and masquerading router.) No time yet to review and comment on all the upgraded applications and libraries, but you will probably only here about those when I need help :-) David
David wrote:
wvdial ====== Users can no longer use the wvdial command to go online with PPP. But no worry, qinternet is a great new tool (that uses wvdial behind the scenes.)
??? Running wvdial as user in 8.2 here. In order to run wvdial as normal user, make sure that your username belongs to groups 'uucp' and 'dialout'. Do a chmod 775 /usr/sbin/pppd and set the safety settings to 'easy', so 775 is not reset to 600. And set the setuid bit: chmod +s /usr/sbin/pppd. The only issue is that every time SuSEconfig is running, this gets lost. SH
On Mon, 2 Jun 2003 22:13:25 +0200
Sjoerd Hiemstra
David wrote:
wvdial ====== Users can no longer use the wvdial command to go online with PPP. But no worry, qinternet is a great new tool (that uses wvdial behind the scenes.)
??? Running wvdial as user in 8.2 here. In order to run wvdial as normal user, make sure that your username belongs to groups 'uucp' and 'dialout'. Do a chmod 775 /usr/sbin/pppd and set the safety settings to 'easy', so 775 is not reset to 600.
And set the setuid bit: chmod +s /usr/sbin/pppd. The only issue is that every time SuSEconfig is running, this gets lost.
You can stop this from happening. Go to /etc/sysconfig/security and set CHECK_PERMISSIONS=NO Or you can remove the line for /usr/sbin/pppd from /etc/permissions -- use Perl; #powerful programmable prestidigitation
On 06/03/2003 04:38 AM, zentara wrote:
On Mon, 2 Jun 2003 22:13:25 +0200 Sjoerd Hiemstra
wrote: In order to run wvdial as normal user, make sure that your username belongs to groups 'uucp' and 'dialout'. Do a chmod 775 /usr/sbin/pppd and set the safety settings to 'easy', so 775 is not reset to 600.
And set the setuid bit: chmod +s /usr/sbin/pppd. The only issue is that every time SuSEconfig is running, this gets lost.
You can stop this from happening. Go to /etc/sysconfig/security and set CHECK_PERMISSIONS=NO
Or you can remove the line for /usr/sbin/pppd from /etc/permissions
Or, better yet add these to /etc/permissions.local, whic SuSEconfig checks last and corrects the permissions to your specs, AND will last through an update. -- Joe Morris New Tribes Mission Email Address: Joe_Morris@ntm.org Web Address: http://www.mydestiny.net/~joe_morris Registered Linux user 231871 God said, I AM that I AM. I say, by the grace of God, I am what I am.
The 03.06.02 at 16:38, zentara wrote:
Go to /etc/sysconfig/security and set CHECK_PERMISSIONS=NO
I would not ever do that...
Or you can remove the line for /usr/sbin/pppd from /etc/permissions
Neither - an inconvenient update would replace it, or even worse, not replace it when it should :-) There is a nice /etc/permissions.local just for that, where I have the line: /usr/sbin/pppd root.dialout 6754 -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson
participants (5)
-
Carlos E. R.
-
David
-
Joe Morris (NTM)
-
Sjoerd Hiemstra
-
zentara