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Archive for the ‘Base System’ Category

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Xen para-virtualized openSUSE 11.2

February 10th, 2010 by

I had to install Xen para-virtualized openSUSE 11.2 (PVM), lucky for me 11.2 DVD iso has broken xen kernel so it does not install, the live CDs do not have any xen kernel at all so they are not useful either. After reading up all the posts on the bugzilla and forums about the subject, found the way to get it done, here is a howto for anyone else who is looking for the solution.

1. Set up http installation source

Install web-server pattern from yast to install apache2 in Dom0

Edit apache configuration /etc/apache2/default-server.conf to follow symlinks, it should look something like this:

#Options none
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks

Mount the DVD iso and copy all the files to your webserver root.

mount openSUSE-11.2-DVD-i586.iso /mnt -o loop
mkdir -p /srv/www/htdocs/suse-11.2
cp -ar /mnt/* /srv/www/htdocs/suse-11.2/
cd /srv/www/htdocs/suse-11.2/boot/i386/
rm *-xen*
wget http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.2/repo/oss/boot/i386/initrd-xen
wget http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.2/repo/oss/boot/i386/vmlinuz-xen
ln -s initrd-xen initrd-xenpae
ln -s vmlinuz-xen vmlinuz-xenpae
cd /srv/www/htdocs/
wget http://download.opensuse.org/update/11.2/rpm/i586/kernel-xen-2.6.31.12-0.1.1.i586.rpm (or the latest)
mv kernel-xen-2.6.31.12-0.1.1.i586.rpm kx.rpm
rcapache2 start

2. Start installation via “yast2 vm-install”, select para-virtualization and as installation source use http://dom0IP/suse-11.2/
3. The hack part:
When the install is about 80%  or “Stop” the reboot after the completion of first stage install, switch to tty2 by using “Sendkey > ctrl+alt+F2”.

chroot /mnt
rpm -Uvh http://dom0IP/kx.rpm –force

Reboot and let the install run its course, at the end of it there should be working domU

Edit: If you have fast internet connection available during install, add the update repository as “Addon product”, with that in place the above hack will not be necessary.

Edit2: If the image still don’t boot, mount the disk image to edit grub’s menu.lst:

mount -o loop,offset=32256 /full/path/to/image/disk0 /mnt
cd /mnt
ln -s vmlinuz-….-xen vmlinuz-xen
ln -s initrd-…..-xen.img initrd-xen
vi /mnt/grub/menu.lst #to look like below:

title XEN
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-xen root=…..
initrd /initrd-xen

Posted in Documentation, Kernel, openSUSE 11.2, Virtualization | 2 Comments »

Writing man pages

February 7th, 2010 by

Here are a few resources for those among you thinking of writing proper documentation for your new project, or to contribute writings or translations to your favorite Community.

Man pages are written in Troff, the original UNIX typesetting system. Nowadays, few people (most notably man page writers and IETF RFC authors) regularly use this markup, but it is rather simple and elegant once you get to know it. For writing man pages, the learning curve is very good, as you only need to know a few macros and, just as if you were working on html and pilfering the sources of an existing  page doing just what you need, you have a wealth of examples to teach you right there on your trusty *NIX box. As the Wikipedia points out:

Troff features commands to designate fonts, spacing, paragraphs, margins, footnotes and more. Unlike many other text formatters, troff can position characters arbitrarily on a page, even overlapping them, and has a fully programmable input language. Separate preprocessors are used for more convenient production of tables, diagrams, and mathematics.

But you don’t need to master all that! For man pages, what you need is knowledge of the man macro package, originally written by James Clark and documented in man(7) or groff_man(7) depending on your distro. Troff input is processed from text files, so you just need your favorite text editor, and a bit of time to play with the markup to learn it in the process.

Here is a way to get started quickly: Linux Journal published a great tutorial a few years back, and the Linux Manual contains the ever-important style guidelines in man-pages(7). Start from scratch, or make a copy of an existing manual page and start editing. One more tip for you:

man ./foo.1

is your friend, to see what you just wrote and marked up in all its glory — and bugs.

WEB RESOURCES
Linux Journal: Writing man Pages Using groff
The Linux Manual: man-pages(7)
The Linux Manual: man(7)

BOOKS
Arnold Robbins, Nelson Beebe, Classic Shell Scripting (O’Reilly – 9780596005955) – Appendix A “Writing Man Pages” is for you.
Dale Dougherty, Tim O’Reilly, Unix Text Processing (out of print, released in the public domain) – all the Troff you could ever want, but not the man macros.

Posted in Base System, Documentation | 1 Comment »

First post / First whishes

December 20th, 2009 by

Dear Santa-Claus, can you provide us a real full kvm solutions for next year.
So I didn’t have to fight with Esx .

Tags:
Posted in Kernel, Virtualization | Comments Off on First post / First whishes

Install Multiple Kernel Versions using the YaST Qt Package Manager

December 8th, 2009 by

You might want to install multiple kernel versions on your system.
The YaST Qt Package Selector provides a nice user interface that allows to manage multiple package versions now.

yast2-qt-pkg 2.18.19 or later supports this feature. You can find packages in my Build Service repository.

First of all you need to tell libzypp that your kernel is a package which is multiversion-enabled by adding this line to your /etc/zypp/zypp.conf:

multiversion = provides:multiversion(kernel)

Start your YaST Software Management. The versions tab shows check boxes for multiversion packages instead of radio buttons.
This enables you to install multiple versions of the same package.

There is also a package group of multiversion packages that list all packages that can be installed in multiple versions.

YaST Qt Package Manager with Multiversion Kernel Packages

Posted in Kernel, Software Management | 7 Comments »

Encrypted directory

December 3rd, 2009 by

I have notebook which contain private data and I don’t want anyone to read it even if my notebook will be stolen. Encrypted whole home partition is too much as my home directory contains also svn or git repositories which could anybody read. So I create encrypted directory in home directory which contain all private data and rest is normal accessible. So how to do it? (more…)

Posted in Base System | 1 Comment »

New pm-utils for openSUSE

November 25th, 2009 by

The current SUSE version of pm-utils is pretty old. Rpm -q said somethink like 0.99.4.20071229. And it also contains a hacked support for s2ram, which is nowadays in upstream version. There has been also a bnc#378883 – Need an updated pm-utils I started a work on this week.

A new pm-utils package for openSUSE is available in home:mvyskocil:branches:Base:System. The HIBERNATE_METHOD is no longer supported, because upstream version contains something better – modules. There are three methods how to run software suspend on Linux

  1. kernel – plain echo something > /proc/something
  2. suspend – tool contains a lot of quirks needed on some HW
  3. tuxonice – kernel and userspace support for hibernate, not in upstream kernel, nor in openSUSE

Because there are too many ways in current Linux world, pm-utils simply support all by specific modules stored in /usr/lib/pm-utils/modules.d, which implements appropriate functions for suspend/hibernate and hybrid. The SUSE default is uswsusp module calls s2ram/s2disk/s2both from software suspend project, because it should be considered as a safe default.

If you want to use different module, you can add a config file somewhere to
/etc/pm/conf.d/
and set the value of SLEEP_MODULE.

# The default sleep/wake system to use. Valid values are:
# kernel The built-in kernel suspend/resume support.
# Use this if nothing else is supported on your system.
# uswsusp If your system has support for the userspace
# suspend programs (s2ram/s2disk/s2both), then use this.
# tuxonice If your system has support for tuxonice, use this.
#
# The system defaults to "kernel" if this is commented out.
SLEEP_MODULE="uswsusp"

You can type more methods, which will be called, so SLEEP_MODULE=”kernel uswsusp” will use kernel and if it fail, or not available, it call uswsusp. Please note that config files are read in C sort order, so names matters.

So please install new pm-utils and test it and tell me if you found any regression (please inform me about a regressions only, I cannot fix generic suspend problems).

Posted in Base System, Factory | 2 Comments »

reiser4 for openSuSE-11.2

November 15th, 2009 by

grab the “reiser4-kmp-$flavor” modules and required “reiser4progs” from:

openSuSE-11.2 Update repo

openSuSE-11.2 Standard repo

regards,
have fun

Posted in Kernel | Comments Off on reiser4 for openSuSE-11.2

openSUSE-LXDE Live CD 1.0.0

September 13th, 2009 by

After lots of test i’m ready to release a new openSUSE-LXDE live CD

Here the change log:

Fix: Lxpanel will "flash" no more (workaround, removed battery applet from panel,
     this applet make lxpanel crash if no battery is found on laptop)
Fix: Added wireless-tools, usbtools, acpid
Fix: Added iwl*-ucode packages (intel wireless cards now working)
Fix: Ath_pci and ath5k conflicts no more (ath5k in blacklist)

Feature: Added Trash support
Feature: Added bluetooth support
Feature: Added "sudo"
Feature: Added "gdb" to help in debugging if crash occurs on LXDE applications
Feature: Added "fuse" and "ntfs-3g"
Feature: Added "rdesktop"

I hope you will enjoy that new release.

Before show you some shots, i would like to attract your attention on a feature i open on openFATE and that is also on the weekly news #88

That features asks to provide LXDE into OSS repo, and to made that installable from DVD media like XFCE.

Please add you vote: Feature Request: #307729: Officially Provide LXDE

Any way, going back to the live, you can download 1.0.0 and 0.9.4 releases from that URL:

http://www.steamedfish.org/downloads/

MD5 and SHA1 sums are available on that page, a very very BIG thank to  Fisher Duan for hosting.

Again please report any issue on my email: andrea[at]opensuse[dot]org

Please notice how “free -m” on lxterminal show that the REAL used ram is just 67MB with the following running applications:

1) Firefox 3.5.2
2) PCManFM
3) Lxterminal
4) Lxtask

Tags:
Posted in Base System, Build Service, Desktop, Distribution, lizards.openSUSE.org, Marketing | 2 Comments »

LXDE: LXDM and Trash support

September 12th, 2009 by

Some cool news for any LXDE users.

The first one, LXDE developers finally started to develop their own Display Manager, that means that soon we’ll need no more the very heavy GDM or the no more developed SLIM.

That new DM is called (as you can think) LXDM and svn snapshot are now available in my home:anubisg1:LXDE repo,  as soon it will be stable enought  i’ll move it into X11:lxde.

(more info about LXDM available here: http://blog.lxde.org/?p=531

SLIM itself has been improved with a couple of patches and the logotrate support.

The second cool thing is a nice patch i got from a Slackware developer, it add trash support using the python trash-cli based on freedesktop.org standards.  PCManFM with trash support is alread yavilable into X11:lxde and home:anubisg1:LXDE repos.

Some screenshots here:


Please consider that home:anubisg1:LXDE needs to be considered a development only repo. I experiment in my repo, and only when i think the changes are stable enought than i’ll move the into OFFICIAL X11:lxde repo.

Posted in Artwork, Base System, Desktop, Distribution, Usability | 1 Comment »

Firewall Zone Switcher Updated

August 28th, 2009 by

I have updated the Firewall Zone Switcher.
It now starts with a main window by default instead of
directly going to the system tray. There’s a settings dialog that
allows to enable the system tray icon and optionally also enables
starting the applet on log-in. Furthermore the daemon now uses
PolicyKit for access control and the applet supports i18n.
(more…)

Posted in Network | 6 Comments »

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