Home Home > Distribution
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 the ‘Distribution’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

openSUSE & Google Summer of Code 2010

March 1st, 2010 by

The wonderful Vincent has already sent the initial call for participation, so who’s up for it then?

OK I’ll take it that there are several hands raised in the audience (I reckon I’m being overly cautious, I’m sure there are loads of hands up but as I don’t have my glasses on I can only see the first two rows).  So what do we need from our lovely community to help make GSoC 2010 a success?

* We need some admins for openSUSE in GSoC 2010. This mainly involves making sure that we do everything we need to participate in GSoC; making sure students feel comfortable in the project, and push our contributors a bit to publish ideas and mentor students.  Basically the GoTo contact points.

* We need people to maintain the GSoC 2010 wiki page.  I have already started the GSoC 2010 page on the wiki, yes it is pretty much a  copy/paste of last years but it gets the ball rolling 😉

* We need people to start thinking about ideas that students could work on.  If you have a good idea, why not put it in openFATE and put it on the wiki too (with a link to the openFate entry)?  That way we can utilise the voting feature of openFate and gauge how much the community would appreciate the student’s hard work.

So there’s nothing stopping you from joining in, so get to it! Oh and if you’re looking for a way to contribute to openSUSE but aren’t a coder this is a great way to get your feet wet with the community 🙂

Tags: ,
Posted in Distribution, Events, Marketing | 1 Comment »

openGarrobito 0.1.9, openSUSE multimedia!

February 24th, 2010 by

OpenGarrobito, is the fruit of the philosophy of free software, because source code is shared, you can create fancy layouts at ease, and are applicable to our needs as I am passionate about the multimedia computer, and worked in a distribution based on my beloved openSUSE and resulted openGarrobito.

For the realization of this release, I am taking a very useful tool that works in the cloud, called susestudio, which compile multiple multimedia programs that are used in Linux, because in the ordinary distributions that are distributed on the Internet and groups that distribute Linux users, do not incorporate multimedia codecs and many multimedia programs, due to licensing issues, I gave myself the task of compiling them into a single distribution and make it public.

But that is exactly what we can do with openGarrobito:

1. Play our mp3 with amarok
2. See our movies with VLC
3. Shingles and DVDs with DeVeDe k9cpy
4. Convert Video devede
5. Edit images with gimp
6. Edit sound with audacity
7. Edit Video KDEN-live
8. Perform our jobs college or office with OpenOffice
9. Browse the Internet safely with Konqueror or Firefox and Google Chrome.
10. Organize our photos with Digikam or if you prefer using Picasa

And now, in this release you can play your favorite games like Nexuiz or openarena.

Countless numbers of applications we can give to this distribution, which is constantly evolving, is currently running under the latest version of openSUSE’s 11.2, and default desktop is KDE SC 4.4.

You openGarrobito has the latest security updates, and all the software on this date until 11 February. I hope you will enjoy it this distribution

Link for download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/opengarrobito/

Link of my blog: http://decks.260mb.com/

Posted in Derivative | Comments Off on openGarrobito 0.1.9, openSUSE multimedia!

FOSDEM’10

February 13th, 2010 by

Just laptop and headphones, book and a bit eat/drink for trip time and of course rube’s cube are in my rucksack 🙂 On last weekend I was on FOSDEM.

FOSDEM is probably the most developer-oriented European Free and Open Source conference/event. As usual it was in Bruxelles, Belgium on first weekend of February. I was there with another Novell/SUSE employees. Majority of they are responsible for work with community. For example, boosters team.

On 5th February we went from Nuremberg at 12 am (by bus) and was in Brussel at 9 pm. At half past ten we (Holgi, Dinar and me) were on the beer event. What can I say about this evening? It was really nice to meet and speak with another developers for a cup of beer 🙂

The main thing that happens on conferences is learning. This was main reason why I was there and why Novell/SUSE help me to visit FOSDEM. A lot of presentation/talks about KDE, or packaging (RPM), or BuildService or… a lot about another open source projects…

I like such events 🙂 It’s not only interesting presentations through which you open/learn a lot of new, but also possibility to get acquainted with other developers or is simple with enthusiasts whom it is unconditional as bring the contribution to development free and open source software.

The next evening I have devoted to walk across Bruxelles. It was very interesting to speak with people there. I have made a lot of photos.

For sure, I’m going to visit FOSDEM in next year, but for next time it will be depends on money. Anyway I will recomend to visit this event for every Linux-/*BSD- user/developer.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Contrib, Events | Comments Off on FOSDEM’10

AstroGarrobo Beta

February 10th, 2010 by

Space, the Final Frontier! This is the tale of one Amateur Astronomer that have found in openSUSE a terrific tool for public outreach, self-learning and teaching platform.

Ok, that was a bit exagerated.

But the truth is that I am enjoying the new SUSE Studio suite. And that’s because it is facilitating my job as an educator. I work with the Nicaraguan Amateur Astronomers Society (ANASA) in teaching basic astronomy to the public. Obviously, my workhorse is an openSUSE laptop, loaded with Stellarium, Celestia, KStars and Xephem (and many other tools for my personal job as an astronomer).

(more…)

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Build Service, Education, GNOME, openSUSE 11.2 | Comments Off on AstroGarrobo Beta

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 »

Cheat ocfs2-tools

February 9th, 2010 by

When running ocfs2 on cLVM, openais+pacemaker setup, you may run into something like described below.

The symptoms:

umount /data1
mspx1d0:~ # tunefs.ocfs2 –fs-features=sparse,unwritten /dev/system/data1
tunefs.ocfs2: Unable to access cluster service while opening device “/dev/system/data1”
mspx1d0:~ # mount /dev/system/data1 /data1
mspx1d0:~ # tunefs.ocfs2 –fs-features=sparse,unwritten /dev/system/data1
tunefs.ocfs2: Configuration error discovered while opening device “/dev/system/data1”

Here is how to get past cluster check when running ocfs2-tools.

From hb_gui or crm stop mounting of the file system and ocf::ocfs2:o2cb resources.

Install ocfs2-tools-o2cb package

Do normal stack configuration using /etc/init.d/o2cb configure, but do not auto start on boot. Read the fine ocfs2 manual.

Bring ocfs2 online: /etc/init.d/o2cb online ocfs2

Start ocfs2 service: rcocfs2 start

Update cluster stack on your partition with ocfs2 filesystem: tunefs.ocfs2 –update-cluster-stack /dev/system/data1

Do your thing with ocfs2-tools, such as: tunefs.ocfs2 -v –fs-features=sparse,unwritten /dev/system/data1

Stop ocfs2 service and unload o2cb: rcocfs2 stop && /etc/init.d/o2cb offline ocfs2 && /etc/init.d/o2cb unload

Re-enable ocf::ocfs2:o2cb resources and run tunefs.ocfs2 –update-cluster-stack /dev/system/data1 again. Re-enable mounting from hb_gui.  Hope there is a simpler way somewhere that I am not aware of.

Posted in Documentation, openSUSE 11.2, Server, Systems Management | Comments Off on Cheat ocfs2-tools

Hermes Twittering about openSUSE Factory

February 1st, 2010 by

I'm going to FOSDEM, the Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting

Last week we updated Hermes on our production servers, they’re running a version now which will become a first Hermes release. I hope to get it packaged and released this week to present it on FOSDEM where I’ll give a talk about Hermes. Don’t miss it if you’re interested in this useful technology.

There went in a lot of technical improvement and bugfixes which one gets aware of if a system like Hermes runs in production for quite some time, such as missing indexes here and there which slow down the database and stuff like that. But that is another story.

What I actually wanted to talk about is the the fact that Hermes now is twittering now for you. You can follow it under the OBSHermes Twitter account. Hermes currently twitters about version updates of all packages in the openSUSE Factory project, so this is your tweet if you want to be at the bleading edge of Factory.

It is configurable for the administrator what actually is twittered. Is there other useful information around the openSUSE project which you would like to see twittered about? If so, please let me know.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Boosters, Build Service, Factory | Comments Off on Hermes Twittering about openSUSE Factory

Tip: transparent editing of gpg encrypted files with vim

January 29th, 2010 by

If you are vim user and also use gpg to encrypt stuff, you might appreciate that you can teach vim to transparently open gpg encrypted files with vim gnupg plugin. Just install vim-plugin-gnupg from Contrib repository:

# zypper install vim-plugin-gnupg

Also, you should add following two lines to your .bashrc to make the plugin work properly:
GPG_TTY=`tty`
export GPG_TTY

Then, if you tell vim to open gpg encrypted file, it will ask for passphrase, transparently decrypts it and after you make changes, it will encrypt the file again.

Posted in Contrib, Miscellaneous, Security | 5 Comments »

LXDE: Mission (almost) Accomplished

January 15th, 2010 by

Sorry if i missed to inform you since September but i passed a very bad period, (including a breakage of my hand and with my ex-girlfriend), but now i’m definetly better, so here i am to inform you about some wonderful progress.

first of all:

LXDM has been released

exactly, LXDE Desktop Manager has been released and looks to be fully working 🙂

2nd) Upgrades, upgrades and more upgrades

several new package version has been released, including lxappereance, lxmusic, lxpanel and so on.

3rd)  We are going to fix a small not-portable issue due to X-KDE-SubstituteUID

check bugzilla #540627 for more informations, what you want to know any way, is that we fixed .desktop files to allow to run applications as root even outside GNOME or KDE

4th) Factory, factory, factory

LXDE is into openSUSE_Factory now! yes, that means lxde will be installable on 11.3 from OSS repo, and probably from DVD.  I actually submitted lxde pattern request and yast2 pattern icons are already into yast svn. So people.. PLEASE TEST AND REPORT!!

5th) OPENSUSE-LXDE MAILING LIST

yes people, we have a new opensuse-lxde mailing list now! Please subscribe to opensuse-lxde@opensuse.org for help, support and development… i’m waiting for you!!

6th) Not official support on openSUSE <= 11.1

That’s not my choice but it’s due to gtk changes, because of that X11:lxde will no more take care of failures on suse <= 11.1. new lxde packages requires gtk2 >= 2.16.0 and backport is impossible (see lxappereance for example).

I think that’s all, if not i’ll write a new blog post, but now i must go to my work or i’ll be fired!!

Regards

Andrea (your favourite openSUSE-LXDE admin!)

Posted in Distribution, Factory, lizards.openSUSE.org, Marketing, Miscellaneous, Packaging, X.org | 2 Comments »

My Inadvertent Experiment & Return

January 11th, 2010 by

Hello openSUSE Project! If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that since October, I’ve been a Windows 7 user instead of an openSUSE user. Well, late last night, I got a visit at home from this character:

samurai

So, I am now an openSUSE user again…

OK. Just kidding. Actually I left the project because I needed to concentrate my time on my work in the liberty movement and school, and when push comes to shove, the little green lizard got shoved. In the process, I had purchased a copy of Windows 7 when Microsoft was selling it for $50, and so I essentially switched over to using Windows 7 for a few months. In the end, I moved back to openSUSE because it’s, quite frankly, a better experience in many ways. I’ll probably write up an article or two in my comparisons between the two OSs… but I’m back now, using openSUSE 11.2.

In the course of these three months, I have to say I missed working with the openSUSE Project, especially the people. So… I’m back! I re-uped my mailinglist subscriptions and have been reading back articles of openSUSE News to try and catch up with what’s been going on in the project. I’m excited to be back and I look forward to working with you all again!

– Kevin

Posted in Miscellaneous, openSUSE 11.2 | 2 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »