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Archive for the ‘Base System’ Category

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LXDE can do it! LXDE on Android smartphone!

August 24th, 2009 by

Yes i did it. I made LXDE running on my new Android smartphoe, the latest HTC masterpiece, the HTC HERO. Here some shots:

That’s great! But there is a main problem here, I’m not running openSUSE with X11:lxde packages, but debian with their stuff. I cannot use my geeko because the phone is an ARM and our openSUSE@ARM looks to still be in an early development stage. This post wants to be a ping to or openSUSE@ARM project and of course some marketing to this great and light Desktop Enviroment. For people interested in, here some hardware infos:

# cat /proc/cpuinfo
Processor       : ARMv6-compatible processor rev 2 (v6l)
BogoMIPS        : 526.25
Features        : swp half thumb fastmult edsp java
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 6TEJ
CPU variant     : 0x1
CPU part        : 0xb36
CPU revision    : 2
Cache type      : write-back
Cache clean     : cp15 c7 ops
Cache lockdown  : format C
Cache format    : Harvard
I size          : 32768
I assoc         : 4
I line length   : 32
I sets          : 256
D size          : 32768
D assoc         : 4
D line length   : 32
D sets          : 256

Hardware        : hero
Revision        : 0080
Serial          : 0000000000000000

# busybox free
total         used         free       shared      buffers
Mem:       197016       191024         5992            0            8
Swap:            0            0            0
Total:       197016       191024         5992

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Accessibility, Architectures, Base System, Desktop, Marketing, Miscellaneous, X.org | 3 Comments »

Interview with Greg Kroah-Hartmann

August 14th, 2009 by

The openSUSE Weekly News are pleased to publish an little Interview with one of Novells Kernel-Hackers: Greg Kroah-Hartmann.

(more…)

Tags: ,
Posted in Kernel, Miscellaneous | Comments Off on Interview with Greg Kroah-Hartmann

Cliced Hybrids

August 13th, 2009 by

Marcus and me have been busy improving the USB experience. So here is how to use it:

download the live cd of your choice from http://download.opensuse.org/factory/iso/ and make sure you grab build218 or later. And then do something like I did:

linux-vgqb:~ # ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/*usb*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 13. Aug 10:04 /dev/disk/by-id/usb-Kingston_DataTraveler_II+_5B751D8C1994-0:0 -> ../../sdb

So I use /dev/sdb in my commands to shorten it, normally I would use /dev/disk/by-id/.. directly to avoid overwriting my hard disk image.
(more…)

Posted in Base System, Distribution, Factory | 1 Comment »

openSUSE@ARM: GSoC status and final spurt

August 12th, 2009 by

I was buried with work in the last couple of days, so whats new on my GSoC-project:

  • a lot of patches went into factory and some more are queued
  • fixed issues with qemu
  • most yast packages already building
  • zypper builds, but requires some more bugfixing
  • X11 builds
  • cross-compilation stable, speed is good

Todo:

  • create image (bootable to console)
  • create image (bootable to x11 on beagleboard)
  • evaluate switch in webfrontend for cross-feature
  • project documentation/GSoC

Posted in Architectures, Base System, Build Service, Factory, Packaging, YaST | Comments Off on openSUSE@ARM: GSoC status and final spurt

28 Partitions on a Single Disk? No Problem!

August 5th, 2009 by

So far it was only possible to have upto 16 device nodes for a single disks. This restricted the number of usable partitions. As a workaround kpartx could be used to create device mapper mappings for further partitions but that was never fully integrated in openSUSE.

With version 2.6.28 the kernel supports upto 256 device nodes per disk, much more than the partition table allows. But since the implementation is not straightforward, the additional device nodes are assigned dynamically, user-space programs may need to be adapted.

For openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 5 YaST was extended to support this new kernel feature.

Some quick tests showed only problems with LVM. If you are interested in this feature and have the possibility please give it a try so that we find remaining bugs.

Posted in Base System, Kernel, openSUSE 11.2, YaST | 1 Comment »

Firewall Zone Switcher

July 10th, 2009 by

So you got that shiny new Netbook, installed Linux on it and carry
it along everywhere you go. The default enabled Firewall blocks
incoming traffic so you feel safe when connecting to that anonymous
WiFi network at your favorite fastfood restaurant. Unfortunately the
very same Firewall becomes quite annoying at home where it prevents
your system from discovering printers or blocks ssh.
(more…)

Posted in Network | 10 Comments »

On wlan and browser authenticated internet

July 7th, 2009 by

Nowadays more and more organisations will use an intercepting proxy to give you access to internet. Last week I had the pleasure to use again such a system. To use is an exaggeration as my opensuse 11.1 box with kde4.3 rc1 connected to the wireless network (network manager) but refused to give me access to the authentication page in the browser.

I did all the decent tests that my brain and time allowed me. Checked the ip, checked gateway and checked dns. They seemed ok.

To make frustration even bigger I was able to connect to th very same network with a kde4.3 beta1.

Posted in Base System, Desktop, KDE, Network | Comments Off on On wlan and browser authenticated internet

openSUSE@ARM/GSoC: Cross-compilation & speedup

June 16th, 2009 by

This weeks topic was the integration of the cross-compilation mode into the build environment. But it’s more than just a cross-toolchain – it’s a speed-boost for our ARM build environment. As of today, the source is deployed in the repository Base:build:arm:cross. It’s not fully bootstrapped because of the current high load and the upcoming downtime – so watch out for changes there and in Base:build:arm.

But what are these “speedup’s” ? First, you’ve to know that in our build environment the ARM binaries are executed through an emulation-layer. This works on the cost of speed. The goal is now, to exchange some key parts in a transparent manner with native x86 binaries: no emulation, no slowdown. Sounds reasonable, but is it easily possible ?
I had to take care not to mix stuff too much because the environment would break. But now I’ve to say:  WOW, this worked incredibly well  😉 .

The distinctive feature of our approach in comparison to usual cross-build environments is that we use the best of native environment emulation and the speed of cross-compilation. Because of this combination we don’t have to patch the individual packages to make them cross-compilation ready. This is a new way of cross-compiling suitable also for large number of packages. A detailed overview about the different crossbuild types can be found on this page.
Another feature to note is that the exchanged binaries (replacing ARM with x86 in the build environment) also don’t need heavy patching and there’s no need to compile them as static binaries. All of them are normal distribution packages.

A switch in the project enables/disables the new features. With the new changes in place, the speed could be vastly increased. Some figures:
* package rpm
* package glibc w/o locales

Build time in minutes
x86 native armv5tel native armv5tel cross factor native factor cross
rpm 8 107 17 13,38 2,13
glibc 33 505 63 15,3 1,91

overview cross-environment

Thats a drop from about x15 to x2 in comparison to the native x86 build-time !! See it yourself when the “crosscompiled” repo in Base:build:arm is up and running.

In other words: “Warp 5, Mr. Sulu !” 😉

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Architectures, Base System, Build Service, Distribution, Packaging | 2 Comments »

openSUSE@ARM/GSoC: weekly status

June 6th, 2009 by

openSUSE@ARM/GSoC: weekly status

The topic of this week was to speed up the build. As I mentioned last week, the
prototype in Base:build:arm is compiling in an emulated environment and thus is
quite slow.

I prepared a cross-toolchain from the sources of binutils, gcc44 and glibc from
openSUSE:Factory. Now its time to integrate this into the build process.
This will improve the performace of the compilation itself. But other areas
in the build process can also be improved, just think of the bash.

Some patches for the Build Service were also commited to svn.

In progress / todo:
* prepare / submit fixes for rpm
* more work on cross-toolchain

Posted in Build Service, Toolchain | Comments Off on openSUSE@ARM/GSoC: weekly status

Sending Proxy Settings via DHCP

June 3rd, 2009 by

It’s a bit “overdressed” for my little homenet, but playing around with DHCP, DNS and YaST is always interesting….

My DHCP Server at home is configured to use LDAP – and I’ve done the configuration via YaST. Now I read in some M$ pages, that it’s possible to tell the Clients via DHCP (and Apache) to use my Proxy server automatically. (Yes, my wife still needs Win** for her schoolwork.)

First, I had to figure out how I can insert two “non standard” options into the LDAP configuration of the DHCP server. I called “yast2 dhcp-server” (thanks for the tab completion, btw!), marked the “Global Options” entry and clicked on “Edit” (not Add!). On the next page, click on “Add” to add a new Option. Just delete the first available entry “allow” and replace it with the full line as you would write it in dhcpd.conf. In my case, this is
option wpad code 252 = text;
and
option wpad “http://myserver/proxy.pac\n”;
(dunno if the “\n” is really needed). That’s the trick. Have a look at /var/log/messages in a separate terminal when you finish the yast2 dhcp-server module to catch possible errors.

Now all what’s left is a running apache server on “myserver” delivering the “proxy.pac” file to your users. The file content is well known – and google would find hundreds of examples for you.

Tags:
Posted in Network, YaST | 1 Comment »

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