It’s easy and obvious to add new files with a driver update (DUD). But what if you need to remove some files? Or, related: can you replace some read-only file by a writable copy?

Let’s for this article assume you want to modify the Xorg configuration. Say,
/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf troubles you.

The direct way would be to write an update.pre script than removes the file and include this into a DUD.

update.pre is run right after the DUD has updated the files in the installation system.

For example:

echo \
  rm /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf \
  > update.pre
mkdud --create test1.dud --dist tw --name "remove 10-evdev.conf" update.pre

But when we try test1.dud we run into this:

Driver Update: remove 10-evdev.conf
Driver Updates added:
  remove 10-evdev.conf
[...]
rm: cannot remove '/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf': Read-only file system

So, we see the catch: much of the installation system resides on a read-only file system! You can’t just go and modify things.

But how does the driver update process manage to add new files to the installation system then? It does so by restructuring the file system using symlinks. In the process all directories that need to be modified are replaced by writable copies.

In other words: if you include the file you want to remove in the DUD – you will be able to remove it. It’s actually sufficient to include the directory the file resides in to make this work.

So, let’s try this:

mkdir -p /tmp/dud/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d
echo \
  "rm /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf" \
  > update.pre
mkdud --create test2.dud --dist tw --name "remove 10-evdev.conf" update.pre /tmp/dud

Now we don’t get any error applying test2.dud and when we login to the installation system, we see:

console:vm9732:/ # ls -l /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d
total 0
console:vm9732:/ # 

Tip

For easy testing a DUD, boot the machine with

startshell=1 sshd=1 password=*** dud=<URL>

startshell=1 wi ll stop the installation workflow after the installation system has been fully prepared just before YaST will be started. sshd=1 will start an SSH daemon and you’ll be able to connect to the machine and look around.

A similar trick can be used to make files writable (watch out for correct shell quoting):

mkdir -p /tmp/dud/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d
echo \
  cp --remove-destination '$(readlink -f /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf)' \
  /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf \
  > update.pre
mkdud --create test3.dud --dist tw --name "make 10-evdev.conf writable" update.pre /tmp/dud

We can verify the result:

console:vm9732:/ # ls -l /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d               
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1099 Apr 24 13:06 10-evdev.conf
console:vm9732:/ #

The file is now writable.

A driver update (DUD) can of course update a single driver. But if that’s not enough and you need a whole new kernel to run an installation?

There are two parts to solve:

1. replace the kernel used during installation and
2. get the new kernel installed

We’ll need two tools for this (both available in Tumbleweed or here: mksusecd and mkdud).

1. Replace the kernel used during installation

For this it’s important to know which kernel packages you’ll actually need. Typically it will be kernel-default and kernel-firmware. But older SUSE distributions (SLE 11 comes to mind) had the kernel packages split into kernel-default and kernel-default-base – you’ll need them both.

To make things confusing, modern SUSE distributions also have kernel-default-base – but it’s an alternative to kernel-default. In this case we don’t need it.

If unsure, check kernel-default. If it contains the actual kernel (e.g. /boot/vmlinuz) then you don’t need kernel-default-base.

On some architectures modules are also taken from xen-kmp-default. If that’s important for you, you can add this package to the kernel list as well.

In fact you can add any number of kernel packages or kmps you like.

In the past, sometimes a different kernel flavor was used. For example PowerPC had kernel-ppc64 for a while. Simply use the flavor you need.

It’s a good idea to gather all the kernel rpms into a single directory for easier use:

> mkdir k
> cp kernel-default.rpm kernel-firmware.rpm k
> cp kernel-default-base.rpm k    # only if needed
# add any kernel-related rpms you need

Then, take your SUSE installation iso and run

> mksusecd --create new.iso \
  --kernel k/* -- \
  original_dvd1.iso

Note that the --kernel option accepts a variable number of arguments, so you have to add an isolated -- to terminate the argument list properly.

The output could look like this:

> mksusecd --create new.iso \
  --kernel k/* -- \
  SLES-11-SP4-DVD-ppc64-GM-DVD1.iso
kernel version: 3.0.101-63-ppc64 --> 3.0.101-94-ppc64
CHRP bootable (ppc64)
building: 100%
calculating sha1...

The command above will actually get the list of required modules from the old installation iso. If you are missing some driver or the new kernel comes with some additional driver, the module will not be added to the new iso.

But there’s the --modules option. It will add the listed modules together with any implicitly required modules via module dependencies.

For example, let’s add the airport wifi-module to our PowerPC iso:

> mksusecd --create new.iso \
  --kernel k/* \
  --modules airport -- \
  SLES-11-SP4-DVD-ppc64-GM-DVD1.iso
kernel version: 3.0.101-63-ppc64 --> 3.0.101-94-ppc64
kernel modules added:
  airport, cfg80211, orinoco
CHRP bootable (ppc64)
building: 100%
calculating sha1...

As you can see, it automatically adds orinoco and cfg80211 as well.

2. Get the new kernel installed

This is relatively simple. A driver update can do this:

> mkdud --create foo.dud \
  --dist sle11 \
  --install repo \
  k/*

This creates a driver update for SLE 11 (which also applies to SP4) and the kernel rpms are installed via an auto-generated add-on repo (--install repo).

Now we have the driver update that installs our kernel packages. But how do we use it?

We integrate it into our iso above!

> mksusecd --create new.iso \
  --initrd foo.dud \
  --kernel k/* -- \
  SLES-11-SP4-DVD-ppc64-GM-DVD1.iso

mksusecd has an --initrd option that directly accepts driver updates and integrates them into the iso.

3. Can I have a choice?

Maybe you just want to test this new kernel or sometimes need the old one and sometimes the new one. Can you make an installation iso that lets you choose the kernel?

Oh yes!

> mksusecd --create new.iso \
  --add-entry 3.0.101-94 \
  --initrd foo.dud \
  --kernel k/* -- \
  SLES-11-SP4-DVD-ppc64-GM-DVD1.iso

This does not replace the old kernel but adds a new boot entry Installation - 3.0.101-94.

So you can install with old or the new kernel.

Yesterday a colleague asked me if it would be possible to apply a driver update (DUD) to the rescue system. He wanted to use a new btrfsprogs package.

My immediate reaction was: no, you can’t do it. But then, there’s no technical reason why it shouldn’t be possible – it actually nearly works. The updates are downloaded as usual – just not applied to the rescue system.

So I thought: “Why not make a driver update so driver updates work also for the rescue system?”

Here’s how I did it.

First, let’s find out how driver updates are usually applied. The code is here:

https://github.com/openSUSE/installation-images/blob/master/data/root/etc/inst_setup#L84-L87

We need just these three lines:

for i in /update/[0-9]*/inst-sys ; do
  [ -d "$i" ] && adddir "$i" /
done

linuxrc downloads the driver updates and stores them in an /update directory. One (numbered) subdirectory for each update.

It obviously uses some adddir script. So we’ll need it as well. Luckily, it’s not far away:

https://github.com/openSUSE/installation-images/blob/master/data/root/etc/adddir

Next, we’ll have to find the spot where the rescue system is set up. It’s done in this script:

https://github.com/openSUSE/installation-images/blob/master/data/initrd/scripts/prepare_rescue

Let’s do some copy-and-paste programming and insert the above code near the end of the script. It then might look like this

# driver update: add files to rescue system
if [ -d /mounts/initrd/update ] ; then
  cp -r /mounts/initrd/update /
  for i in /update/[0-9]*/inst-sys ; do
    [ -d "$i" ] && /mounts/initrd/scripts/adddir "$i" /
  done
fi

Some notes:

• You have to know that prepare_rescue is run as the last thing before we exec to init. So everything is already in place, the left-over files from initrd are mounted at /mounts/initrd and will be removed at the end of the script.
• This means we have to copy our updates into the new root directory, else they will be lost.
• Also, we plan to make the adddir script available at /scripts/adddir by our driver update (see below).

Now let’s create the driver update:

mkdud --create dud_for_rescue.dud \
  --dist tw --dist leap42.1 --dist leap42.2 --dist sle12 \
  --name 'Apply DUD also to rescue system' \
  --exec 'cp adddir prepare_rescue /scripts' \
  adddir prepare_rescue

Here’s what this call does, line-by-line:

• the fix works for all current SUSE distributions, so let’s support them
• give the driver update some nice name
• this command is run right after the driver update got loaded; we copy the scripts out of the driver update to their final location
• add adddir and our modified prepare_rescue script

Here is the result: dud_for_rescue.dud.

Now, back to the original problem: how to use this to update a package in the rescue system? That’s easy:

mkdud --create new_btrfs.dud \
  --dist sle12 \
  dud_for_rescue.dud btrfsprogs.rpm

creates a driver update (for SLE12) that updates btrfsprogs also in the rescue system.

Important note: The driver does not work on openSUSE Tumbleweed. Unfortunately, the version of X-server is too new for the driver.

SHA1 is obsolete by now. The script used SHA256 for integrity of the downloaded files.

New Feature from packaging script:

• systemd support

Resolved Issues:

• [SWDEV-82980] Ubuntu 15.10 fails when building the .deb packages

Link: AMD Catalyst 15.12 Release Notes

Downloads:

• Script: makerpm-amd-15.12.sh
• SHA1: makerpm-amd-15.12.sh.sha256

Installation guide (English):
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:AMD_fglrx#Building_the_rpm_yourself

Bruno Friedmann will build the new RPM packages in the fglrx repository. Stay tune!

If you find any issue with the driver. Don’t hesitate to contact me. I am in contact with AMD and can forward your issue to the right place. Feedback are welcome.

A report of your system is very helpful beside your feedback. You can generate it with the script:
su -c 'sh makerpm-amd-15.12.sh -ur'

Have a lot of fun!

Sebastian
openSUSE member / Official AMD Packaging Script Maintainer for openSUSE
German Blog: openSUSE – proprietären Grafik-Treiber AMD Catalyst 15.12 als RPM installieren

I have adapted the AMD driver to the Kernel 4.4 (rc3). For the moment it works for Kernel 4.4-rc3. Unfortunately the AMD driver has a compatibility issue in combination with the GNOME Desktopmanager and X-Server. As a workaround, I recommend for GNOME another Desktopmanager such as lightdm until the issue is hopefully fixed.

Resolved Issues:

• [SWDEV-55204] Stuttering when running glxgears with VSync enabled
• [SWDEV-7339] Intermittent mouse cursor corruption

Link: AMD Catalyst 15.11 Release Notes

Downloads:

• Script: makerpm-amd-15.11.sh
• SHA1: makerpm-amd-15.11.sh.sha1

Installation guide (English):
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:AMD_fglrx#Building_the_rpm_yourself

Bruno Friedmann will build the new RPM packages in the fglrx repository. Stay tune!

If you find any issue with the driver. Don’t hesitate to contact me. I am in contact with AMD and can forward your issue to the right place. Feedback are welcome.

A report of your system is very helpful beside your feedback. You can generate it with the script:
su -c 'sh makerpm-amd-15.11.sh -ur'

Have a lot of fun!

Sebastian
openSUSE member / Official AMD Packaging Script Maintainer for openSUSE
German Blog: openSUSE – proprietären Grafik-Treiber AMD Catalyst 15.11 als RPM installieren

Important note: The first beta version of openSUSE Leap (future openSUSE 42.1) was released a few days ago. However, the AMD driver has not been adapted yet to the new upcoming openSUSE version. In the next days I will working on this and release a new update for this script.

Important note 2: After some experimentation with the GNOME Desktopmanager, unfortunately it does not work with the driver. Because actually something seems to be amiss. To this end, I will contact the AMD developers. As a workaround, I recommend for GNOME another Desktopmanager such as lightdm until the issue is fixed.

Resolved Issues:

• [425910] Driver installation sometimes fails on Ubuntu 14.04.3
• [424450] Company of Heroes® 2 – Game crashes while running the performance test
• [424794] Middle-earth™: Shadow of Mordor – Corruption observed in game
• [424882] DIRT® Showdown – Corruption observed in game
• [425234] DIRT® Showdown – Game crashes after the loading screen
• [424802] DOTA™ 2 – Application hang observed while exiting the game
• [424255] AMD Catalyst™ Installer removing EGL links resulting in Xserver/Xorg load failure
• [423471] Unable to switch desktop mode after installing AMD Catalyst™ driver
• [423735] Renaming Counter-Strike: GO and other Steam game binary improves performance

Known Issues:

• [419960]: Vari-Bright on some configurations is not decreasing brightness as expected

Link: AMD Catalyst 15.9 Release Notes

Downloads:

• Script: makerpm-amd-15.9.sh
• SHA1: makerpm-amd-15.9.sh.sha1

Installation guide (English):
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:AMD_fglrx#Building_the_rpm_yourself

Bruno Friedmann will build the new RPM packages in the fglrx repository. Stay tune!

If you find any issue with the driver. Don’t hesitate to contact me. I am in contact with AMD and can forward your issue to the right place. Feedback are welcome.

A report of your system is very helpful beside your feedback. You can generate it with the script:
su -c 'sh makerpm-amd-15.9.sh -ur'

Have a lot of fun!

Sebastian
openSUSE member / Official AMD Packaging Script Maintainer for openSUSE
German Blog: openSUSE – proprietären Grafik-Treiber AMD Catalyst 15.9 als RPM installieren

Important note: This driver supports also X-Server 1.17 on Tumbleweed. GNOME Desktopmanager (gdm) is working partially, so you need a workaround. Who has activated the automatic user login in GNOME and want to make a user change, they get a black screen on TTY-console and the login manager seems to be crashed. This issue can be solved when the automatic user login is disabled in GNOME.

For GNOME user with gdm: Execute the following command as root after the installation of the AMD driver and before restart the machine:
sh makerpm-amd-15.7.sh --install-gdm-fix

To revert the changes:
sh makerpm-amd-15.7.sh --uninstall-gdm-fix

New Features:

• AMD PowerXpress support for laptops equipped with Intel 6th generation (Skylake) CPUs
• Linux Platform Atomics & SVM Fine Grain Buffer support for Carrizo APUs
• Multi-Device support for OpenCL 2.0

Resolved Issues:

• [421317] Segmentation fault observed while launching some OpenGL games in RHEL7.1
• [419365] Error message observed during installation through rpm package in RHEL 6.5, 7.0
• [419162] System hangs while running Dying Light
• [421858] clinfo could not recognize up to four GPU devices

Known Issues:

• [419960]: Vari-Bright on some configurations is not decreasing brightness as expected

Link: AMD Catalyst 15.7 Release Notes

Downloads:

• Script: makerpm-amd-15.7.sh
• SHA1: makerpm-amd-15.7.sh.sha1

Installation guide (English):
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:AMD_fglrx#Building_the_rpm_yourself

Bruno Friedmann will build the new RPM packages in the fglrx repository. Stay tune!

If you find any issue with the driver. Don’t hesitate to contact me. I am in contact with AMD and can forward your issue to the right place. Feedback are welcome.

A report of your system is very helpful beside your feedback. You can generate it with the script:
su -c 'sh makerpm-amd-15.7.sh -ur'

Have a lot of fun!

Sebastian
openSUSE member / Official AMD Packaging Script Maintainer for openSUSE
German Blog: openSUSE – proprietären Grafik-Treiber AMD Catalyst 15.7 als RPM installieren

Warning: This driver based on an old development fork and does not support X-Server 1.17 on Tumbleweed. GNOME Desktopmanager (gdm) is also broken for the moment. My suggestion for you, stay on the latest AMD Catalyst 15.3 Beta.

New Features:

• Support for SUSE® Linux Enterprise Desktop 12

Resolved Issues:

• [417630]: Fixes the issue of discrete GPU not being powered off in Power-Saving mode on some PowerXpress AMD GPU + AMD APU platforms
• [416499]: Fixes minor screen corruption when resuming from S3 caused by display hot plugging

Known Issues:

• [419960]: Vari-Bright on some configurations is not decreasing brightness as expected

Link: AMD Catalyst 15.5 Release Notes

Downloads:

• Script: makerpm-amd-15.5.sh
• SHA1: makerpm-amd-15.5.sh.sha1

Installation guide (English):
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:AMD_fglrx#Building_the_rpm_yourself

Bruno Friedmann will build the new RPM packages in the fglrx repository. Stay tune!

If you find any issue with the driver. Don’t hesitate to contact me. I am in contact with AMD and can forward your issue to the right place. Feedback are welcome.

A report of your system is very helpful beside your feedback. You can generate it with the script:
su -c 'sh makerpm-amd-15.5.sh -ur'

Have a lot of fun!

Sebastian
openSUSE member / Official AMD Packaging Script Maintainer for openSUSE
German Blog: openSUSE – proprietären Grafik-Treiber AMD Catalyst 15.5 als RPM installieren

Unfortunately there is no release notes from AMD. This update can solve the issue with PowerXpress but I can not really verified this because lack of such hardware.

Another side note I have implemented a workaround in the script to get the driver works with the GNOME Displaymanager + GNOME. It is a little cruel hack but it works for the moment. Thanks to the user that they posted the article in my blog.

For GNOME user with gdm: Execute the following command as root after the installation of the AMD driver and before restart the machine:
sh makerpm-amd-15.3-beta.sh --install-gdm-fix
If you update the AMD driver, so the workaround does not work anymore. It is important that you do not delete the file /amd_xversion and is needed for the workaround.

To revert the changes:
sh makerpm-amd-15.3-beta.sh --uninstall-gdm-fix

Before I forget it: All user from openSUSE Tumbleweed can also install the driver. But remember, Tumbleweed is under heavy development. I can not guarantee that the driver works in the future yet.

Downloads:

• Script: makerpm-amd-15.3-beta.sh
• SHA1: makerpm-amd-15.3-beta.sh.sha1

Installation guide (English):
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:AMD_fglrx#Building_the_rpm_yourself

The above named installation guide is only for the stable driver but you can adapt it for the beta driver.

Bruno Friedmann will build the new RPM packages in the fglrx repository. Stay tune!

If you find any issue with the driver. Don’t hesitate to contact me. I am in contact with AMD and can forward your issue to the right place. Feedback are welcome.

A report of your system is very helpful beside your feedback. You can generate it with the script:
su -c 'sh makerpm-amd-15.3-beta.sh -ur'

Have a lot of fun!

Sebastian
openSUSE member / Official AMD Packaging Script Maintainer for openSUSE

German Blog: openSUSE – proprietären Grafik-Treiber AMD Catalyst 15.3 Beta als RPM installieren

Nah Open Source/Free Software doesn’t matter anyway

In year 2014 wasn’t just year on Linux getting into you hands as Android. It was strange year in Linux land. Probably biggest Linux hater from Redmond that called Linux Cancer said ‘hey Free Software and Open Source are cool! We take cherrys like Apple and sell them to you in nice package and there nothing wrong with that (And I’m with them.. it’s what they can do if you buy it)’. Small IoT (Internet-Of-Things, Industrial Internet or choose your favorite term) ARM SOC boards are so Nineties. MIPS made proud comeback! Once it was SGI’s own bitch but now there is growing mass of small very cheap wireless boards started to flow in. All supporting Linux and most have also Android. Targeted to next big thing that you are doing when not playing.

In Finland where I’m located this have been year of economical rumble (read economical crash). Mass layoffs, industrial work places are getting rare and Nokia was sold to that huge firm from Redmond. Selling Nokia out was end of Finland’s mobile dreams as they now have new tablet and fear not also Jolla is launching their new shiny Sailfish tablet and got very good funding through indie-go-go. Ok nobody really wants this tablet because of Android but it’s good to see there is guys and girls that still think with punk attitude and believe that very small firm like Jolla can produce something that big players can’t.

Year 2014 also was big climate is changing year. USA and China make promise to cut their carbon dioxide emission till 2030. USA will do something and China says their peak will be 2030. Does this stop global warming probably not but at least now it’s official that climate is changing. How this is relevant with Linux? Most of these calculation are done in ‘super computers’ and those run tadaaaa… Linux. They don’t run Fedora or openSUSE because they are mostly very fast calculators but they run Linux kernel and something that as immortals never will know because most of them doesn’t calculate climate change things. They calculate nuclear war scenarios. Hello Dr. Falken shall we play a game? Linux++ and HP Machine anyone?

Firefox which is now 10 years old. They broke up with Google because as you can see they don’t need that search flow anymore. Firefox preset for searching in USA is now Yahoo, Russian Yandex and China Baidu. Mozilla also made bold moves with Firefox OS in 2014. More phones and if you need low end cheap phone so you should consider Firefox OS phone 25$ that is very cheap.

So what happened in Linux land

openSUSE made only one release 13.2 but then rumbled big changes in. openSUSE is also catching up popular rolling release method like Arch Linux with Tumbleweed but this year openSUSE upstream Factory also become a rolling release and then it get together with Tumbleweed. It’s good thing! Really things get tested and traditional releases are more stable. Hooray for that. There was and gigantic war against systemd and you can start sending me millions of hate mails for a start because I Like it! It’s modern and does everything that was wrong with Linux init. No more big tune this tune that complex learn curve up to your a** stuff very neat simple configuration. Ok it’s bloat.. but why don’t you start hating Linux kernel. It’s not very UNIX nether it’s doesn’t just one thing like BSD micro-kernel approach. But that is what I wanted to say about that. If you fork Debian just to have Sysvinit I think you are little bit over reacting but best luck to you I’m nothing but thumbs up get it rolling! At the end this feels like Pulseaudio hating campaign. Everybody hated it first but now nobody even notices that they are using it.

Also it becomes clear 2014 that Desktop Linux will never come. Time just passed by and people moved to other things and we have desktop Linux Google’s Chromebooks. In year 2014 It also becomes clear that nor Tizen or Ubuntu phone will be huge success at least it takes little bit longer. My hope is that X will die in great crash of meteorite or let me rephrase how about Wayland project will never take X-windows place and things never become sweet again. Canonical  shiny move with Mir display server will shake things up if it becomes successful. Time will tell how things end up will Mir be successor of X or should it be Wayland?

So what to give as present if you want to give Linux based device?

There is so many Linux gift list to choose from that I just link to them so you can choose from yourself.

This was how I see year 2014. Let’s meet interesting year 2015 which is just few weeks away and light will come back and darkness fade away.