Home Home > 2008
Sign up | Login

Deprecation notice: openSUSE Lizards user blog platform is deprecated, and will remain read only for the time being. Learn more...

Archive for 2008

Developing with libyui/libzypp & python – part4

November 11th, 2008 by

Let’s extend the application to make it even more useful!

* add support for YaST-Repositories

* add Support for different architectures

* use always a random temporary directory

Now, it looks like this:

Picture of the Application

You can grab it out of my home: in the openSUSE Build Service (for openSUSE 11.0).

Start it with “repoviewer”, add the repository’s url, select the type, the architecture and hit “Go!” .
You can choose the architectures only for the “highest” type of the family as they list the “lower” types, too.
So to see “ppc” packages. use “ppc64” in the combobox and later “ppc” in the “Arch” column.
For big repos (like factory) it takes some time to download and parse the metadata.

Also try in a console-window:
unset DISPLAY; repoviewer

😉 thanks to libyui, that just works !
Update: You can access also local directories (like mounted CDs/DVDs).
Just use “file:///” and the full path ! E.g.: “file:///media/SU1100.001/”

YaST releases independent of openSUSE releases?

November 7th, 2008 by

YaST is one of the cornerstones of openSUSE. It is developed for openSUSE and is released as part of openSUSE. There never was a release of YaST independent of openSUSE. Even the versioning of YaST is tied to openSUSE – the versions are 2.X.Y, where X is increased for every openSUSE release (17 for 11.1) and Y is simply a patch level, whenever a new fix or feature is added. Even more, every YaST package has its own versioning, so the only way to ensure you have a consistent set of YaST packages is via dependencies set in the .spec file of the YaST packages.

But in principle, YaST is a tool that can be used across distributions and there are people interested in this to happen. There are technical barriers to do releases independent of openSUSE (e.g. a lot of openSUSE-specific knowledge and behavior coded in YaST) as well as procedural. During past years, a lot of these non-technical issues has been addressed as we opened up the YaST development (re-licensing the code under GPL, opening up source control system and mailing lists, etc).

But still, there is one big thing left: YaST packages are released in concert with openSUSE. Yes, it is very convenient for openSUSE, but it makes it almost impossible to track the development during for people outside of our great distribution.

If one looks at the way the YaST packages are updated during the hotphase of an openSUSE release, the core parts of YaST (yast2-devtools, yast2-core, libyui, …) are rarely updated, they get a bug fix here and there. However, the distribution specific parts (yast2-pkg-bindings, yast2 common libraries, bootloader, storage, networking, …) get a fast flow of patch-level releases, typically several between openSUSE milestones.

Thus, the way forward I like the most right now is a compromise: a core YaST system should be released independently of the openSUSE release cycle while specific modules could keep their crescendo during openSUSE hot phase. How to do that?

For core YaST packages (a list to be defined) would be released independently of openSUSE and during hot phase, they would be handled the way other FOSS parts of openSUSE are – by patching the code in the package. The rest of the YaST, current practice would stay untouched.

There are clearly advantages – the YaST developers can do a proper release management of the core code and it is much more predictable how the core part of YaST will be released. On the other hand, people would need to be aware of the split.

However, I can imagine there is a lot of I did not realize. I’m definitely interested in comments about this topic.

Follow The Netbook Road

November 6th, 2008 by

As many people will have noticed from my ramblings on twitter and identi.ca and also from my sporadic almost dumb sounding questions on IRC (thanks very much for your patience in IRC btw), I have been working on getting a usable installation of openSUSE on the eeePC 701 – both GNOME and KDE4. As I have a 4GB SSD model my aim is to have a feature full install taking up no more than 2.6GB. Yes I know this doesn’t help those with the 2GB model, but I’m scratching my own itch here ;). Ultimately I would like to be able to create USB and CD images of the builds in time for 11.1’s release which is in about 43 days time, problem is KIWI does not like me 🙁 but I will persevere and see what I can conjure up in time. I am a happy user of openSUSE 11.0 with XFCE on my eeePC at the moment, but I fancy a bit of a challenge and a good dose of stress and anger trying to get it to work will be a welcome distraction from the stress and chaos I have to deal with at work 🙂

So what packages am I looking at putting on there? Below are a couple of tables of applications and what I have selected for each DE including ASUS eeePC related drivers (ACPI/Events) and also bluetooth; I have tried to stick to those that come with the DE e.g. all KDE apps are KDE4 variants, and if a DE provides an app for a function I try to use that.  So the first iteration of the table is:

  KDE GNOME XFCE
Terminal Konsole GNOME-Terminal Terminal
Text Editor Kwrite Gedit Mousepad
Web Browser Konqueror Epiphany Epiphany
File Manager Dolphin Nautilus Thunar
Music Player Amarok2 Banshee xfmedia
Video Player Dragon Player Totem xfmedia
PDF Viewer Okular Evince Evince
IM client Kopete Pidgin Pidgin
IRC client irssi Pidgin Pidgin
Office Suite OOo OOo OOo
E-mail Kmail Evolution Claws-Mail
RSS Akregator Liferea Liferea
Calendar Korganiser Evolution Orage
Addressbook Kaddressbook Evolution Claws-Mail
Flashplayer Yes Yes Yes
Java Java-1.6 Java-1.6 Java-1.6
Codecs Xine Gstreamer Xine
Photo Viewer Gwenview F-spot Ristretto
FTP Client Dolphin Nautilus Gftp
Networking NetworkManager NetworkManager NetworkManager
Total Space Taken Up 2.6GB / 2676552k 2.7GB / 2752336k 2.6GB / 2718412k

 

As you can see KDE4 takes up the least amount of space followed by XFCE with GNOME dropping into third place.  This surprised me as I actually expected XFCE to be way ahead in the lead.  I then tried to minimise the number of applications and tried to use apps that could multi task, still prefering those that are included as part of the openSUSE distro:

  KDE GNOME XFCE
Terminal Konsole GNOME-Terminal Terminal
Text Editor Kwrite Gedit Mousepad
Web Browser Konqueror Epiphany Epiphany
File Manager Dolphin Nautilus Thunar
Music Player MPlayer Totem xfmedia
Video Player MPlayer Totem xfmedia
PDF Viewer Okular Evince Evince
IM client Kopete Pidgin Pidgin
IRC client irssi Pidgin Pidgin
Office Suite OOo OOo OOo
E-mail Kmail Claws-Mail Claws-Mail
RSS Akregator Claws-Mail Claws-Mail
Calendar Korganiser Claws-Mail Orage
Addressbook Kaddressbook Claws-Mail Claws-Mail
Flashplayer Yes Yes Yes
Java Java-1.6 Java-1.6 Java-1.6
Codec Framework
ffmpeg Gstreamer Xine
Photo Viewer Gwenview Eye Of GNOME Ristretto
FTP Client Dolphin Nautilus Gftp
Networking NetworkManager NetworkManager NetworkManager
Total Space Taken Up 2.6GB / 2662540k
2.6GB / 2682516k
2.6GB / 2716364k

As you can see KDE is still the leader, but GNOME has managed to close the gap significantly.

You will notice that there are some notable applications missing from both tables, both from the Mozilla family – FireFox and Thunderbird.  I chose not to use FireFox as the browser as I have been experiencing some icky lockups with it, and this is irrespective of platform.  I decided against Thunderbird because it just did not like to display correctly on the 7″ screen, even the version supplied by Xandros refused to display nicely.  As KDE4 doesn’t have a native IRC client yet I have chosen irssi, i will update the list when a native KDE4 client is available – most likely Quassel.  Also as it stands Kaffeine is not available for KDE4 yet, when that happens I would imagine I would replace MPlayer with it.

Both the GNOME and KDE4 builds were based on a minimal X install – for GNOME add gnome-panel and gnome-session; for for KDE add kdebase4-session, kdebase4-workspace and kde4-win; XFCE was based on the supplied pattern.  One thing I did notice is that 11.1 (Beta4) seems to have put on a bit of weight in comparison to 11.0, a base install appears to be ~400MB more O_o.  I am going to to do a verification shortly and file a bug so hopefully I can thin them out even further.

If people have any recommendations or suggestions as to what applications to use, then please let me know.  My next step is to create both ISO and USB images, any and all help would be much appreciated – SUSEStudio access would be even better ;)  This list is not meant to be the be all and end all, but more a matter of itch scratching.  Yes I know I could reduce the space taken up if I didnt bother with any of that non-free codec crud, and drop flash from the equation, but I’m pragmatic and ultimately want to see people use openSUSE.  Get them using our distro first, once thatis established then we can educate them on the ugly side of things.  Once I manage to create the images with the above package list i will look at creating a completely free version with no colsed codecs/apps.

Once again I’d like to thank all those on IRC for there help and advice – JP Rosevear, James Wilcox, Stephan Binner, Will Stephenson, Martin Schandler and Hubert Figuiere.

Bootloader gets chattier

November 6th, 2008 by

Since openSUSE 11.0. we have some basic speech support in our bootloader. This enables visually impaired people to use the bootloader as there is usually no other output device available at that time (BIOS doesn’t really support braille displays).

It uses the PC-speaker for output (which has the benefit that you don’t need specialized sound drivers for every hardware).

If you didn’t try it yet: press F9 at the boot screen.

I’ve reworked that a good deal in openSUSE 11.1 RC1 (2MB sound samples) and now it reads all menus and dialogs to you and spells all chars you enter in input dialogs (actually it speaks the char left from cursor).

The sound samples are pre-generated with espeak. But you are of course free to replace them with your own voice if you like that more. 😉

What to do if every kernel update break your bootloader settings

November 6th, 2008 by

Perl-Bootloader response for kernel post-install bootloader update script. Current target is ensure, that you have in your bootloader actually kernel and also that entries for old kernel is removed. This is problematic for some complex or manually enhanced configuration. In this case perl-Bootloader should somehow break your settings (this mean you still can boot, but your enhancement or extra sections can dismiss). This should change in future as noticed in bugzilla .

If you want maintain your configuration manually, you can simple set your bootloader to none. There is two ways how you can do it. First is set LOADER_TYPE=”none” in /etc/sysconfig/bootloader. Second is set this in yast2 bootloader. Another advantage is that this take almost no-time, so if obtain hardware configuration for update take to much time, this is workaround.

Warning, if you set bootloader type to none you must manually edit your bootloader configuration after kernel update. What can help you, is set image and initrd to symlinks which lead to actual kernel.

OpenOffice_org 3.0 final available

October 30th, 2008 by

I’m happy to announce that the build 3.0.0.3.5 passed testing and OpenOffice.org 3.0 final packages are available in the Build Service OpenOffice:org:STABLE project.

Note that OOo is very complex application. We are sure that some annoying bugs will be found within the following weeks. Please report bugs into bugzilla. See also known bugs below. I would like to update the package once again within next two weeks with some important fixes that will be available in the meantime.

Note: openSUSE-11.1-betaX and FACTORY include totaly reworked packages where the build is split into many source packages. It is a bit broken right now. We would like to put it into the Build Service as soon as possible but it will take some time to fix the build on older distributions again. Please be patient.

(more…)

How survive zypper dup on system with bad internet connection

October 30th, 2008 by

Maybe someday you try zypper dup to actualize your distribution and in middle of process it fail, because you are disconnected or some packages is actualized before you download it (especially on factory this can happen). It is more safety download packages at first and then install from this local files.

How todo this is little tricky, at first you must enable caching downloaded files (I do it only for remote connection):

zypper mr –keep-packages –remote

So now you cache all downloaded files and now try testing run of dup. Trick is that all packages download for that test is cached.

zypper dup –dry-run

Now if you have slow connection I reccomend also disable autorefresh for all repositories, because if repository is refreshed before dup, you can easily find that some packages is newer than package in cache and you must download it.

zypper mr –all –no-refresh

Now is everything prepared for zypper dup, which use files from cache. Cache can take quite lot of disk space, so after dup you can clean it.

zypper clean

And thats all. This features work from OpenSuse 11 and you can also use this trick for zypper update or zypper install.

Followup “10 Things …”

October 28th, 2008 by

I put the post “10 Things …” into the wiki. I rearranged the order a little bit, but basicly it’s the same page. If you have suggestions how to expand it, feel free to do it. The main intention was to write down things that users always ask me on events, of course it could be extended to a general “Tips and Tricks for openSUSE users”. But keep in mind that we already have the Users FAQ. Thanks for the comments, i will start writing an article or chapter how to buy new hardware for Linux soon.

KIWI-LTSP at the Brindisi’s Linux-Day (Italy)

October 26th, 2008 by

Yesterday, 25 October, ILS (Italian Linux Society) and italian LUGs (Linux User Groups) had organized Linux Day. A day, where we spread words about Linux

Me and my LUG (BriLUG – Brindisi Linux User Group) worked to it, on my City (Brindisi indeed).

Here some photos:

me with suse gadgets

in particular, in the morning i talked about GnuPG keys.

The evening was an “installation party” where i presented KIWI-LTSP to teachers and schools representatives.

(same child plays with openSUSE-edu on LTSP laptops)

The project likes and infact, the press talked about it to. (check second colomn)

A great Day isn’t it?

(all photos will be available on BriLUG website)

Andrea

KDE 4: Hiding of Task Bar is now Part of openSUSE 11.1

October 24th, 2008 by

When I blogged a couple of weeks ago about KDE3 and KDE4, I mentioned that hiding of the task bar is the number one missing feature. Yesterday I talked with Will Stephenson – he was hacking on the sofa in the hallway – and he showed me some new stuff including this one which is now in openSUSE 11.1 Beta3.

To enable it, do the following: (more…)