SuSE 9.1

Day 1 - 14 Jul 04

  Special note: I am reorganizing/re-writing these pages. If you have found useful information here, or think that something could be expanded, please drop me an e-mail and tell me about it. It seems the most popular items are the latest SuSE's and VMware. I can't afford to purchase the new versions of VMware so I will always have the info on how to run version 3.2 on SuSE ... if it will. I will probably quit updating my versions of SuSE when my 3.2 VMware no longer works.

    Actually, I installed 9.1 last night but I am configuring and using it as of today. For the install I chose Upgrade. I read as much as I could find about the new version and tried to anticipate problems. The main two being, dual boot with Windows and using VMware to run Win2k inside Linux. There was/is a problem with parted in the released version. This caused a problem with Windows dual booting. They have a fix which I loaded during the install. The fix can be found at:
   http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2004/05/fhassel_windows_not_booting91.html

    Ch..ch..cha..changes!! As I've stated elsewhere in these pages, I hate changes. Mainly the ones that take me out of my comfort zone. You know, those routines, programs, utilites, conviences, etc. that you have used forever. I want to update with the latest but I don't want it to change my lifestyle. Heard or thought that before? Well, let me say this about that. The PC/Computer world is constantly changing in attempts to make things faster and hopefully easier. The word convient also creeps in there now and then. But, alas, PC stands for Personal Computer and everyone is expected to set them up to suit themselves. This is where the word convient comes into play. We, or at least I, setup our destops to have items that are used heavily, readily available. This can be accomplished in SuSE Linux and others through some configurations. "Similar" to Windows desktops.

    As stated above, I did an update, not a full install. After all was said and done, I was able to boot up into SuSE 9.1, login and get to my new desktop. This, however, was not totally new. A lot of my previous settings were still there. But not all. I had icons on my desktop for my WinXP drives D and E. Also for both DVD drives and my floppy. The E drive and the two DVD's and the floppy were not there in this new setup. Usually the setups would leave out my Zip drive. This time it was there and it worked fine.

    Now then, here is a big change, for me, and it is somewhat for the better... maybe. VMware did not get properly configured to work under this new system setup. So, I can't use my favorite HTML editor, Homesite. However, the newest Bluefish that is included with this new version of SuSE appears to be lots better than the previous one. So, the first part of this write up is being accomplished via Bluefish. I can't even use Chami. It is also Windows specific. Alllrighty now. I am forced to use Linux software totally. Will I stay that way? Probably not. I like to tell me friends and aquaintances that I run Windows inside Linux!!

    Welllll... it's not gona be a smooth changeover. Tried the bookmark that selects my site on my PC, not the Network, and it didn't work. Got that infamous message:
"The connection was refused when attempting to contact dusty-tr.computing."
Now usually this has been cause the php extention was not included in the httpd file. Guess I'll have to check that. Hmmm, ok that was not it.

Installed in 9.0 - 9.1 status

Item Status
ScreenSaver Works with no changes
Mozilla/Internet Works with no changes
Zip Drive Works with no changes. Actually, I had problems. It was wierd. If I wrote to the zip disk it would mess up my keyboard and I would have trouble closing some of the application windows. No I have not resolved this yet.
Local HTML site No worky .. got it to work.
VMware No worky .. got it to work.
alias & functions Still Working so far
Nope. Problem with Display.
groups appear to be the same
Open Office Still Works and faster!!
Sound Had to run YAST configuration
Apache Web Server No worky .. got it to work.

    Oh darn!! It's not letting me use Nedit in root. Even though I have used 'host + localhost' it still complains about not being able to use the display.

alias goroot='xhost + localhost;xterm -geometry 100x35+130+90 -bg Red3 -fg White -font 8x13 -rightbar -T InRoot -e su &'

dusty-tr:/home/ctaylor # ne
[1] 4725
dusty-tr:/home/ctaylor # Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

NEdit: Can't open display


[1]+  Exit 1                  \nedit $FILE_NAME

27 Jul 04 - Decided to find out why I can't use the display. 'xauth list' in my Home area displays a lot of information. However, in root it does not. So, evidently .Xauthority is not getting set properly for root. Matter of fact the .Xauthority file in the root dir is empty! Hmmmmm... so what now? Do I copy the .Xauthority file from my area to root? Ok, from the Web: Xpermissions
The above boils down to this:
So there must be something in SuSE's initscripts that cause this. Ah, yes, I see, /usr/X11R6/bin/startx reads /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager, and if in that file DISPLAYMANAGER_XSERVER_TCP_PORT_6000_OPEN is not set to "yes", it will start the server with the -nolisten tcp argument. After changing DISPLAYMANAGER_XSERVER_TCP_PORT_6000_OPEN to "yes" all was well.
Well, that was not the case in my SuSE 9.1. Hmmmm.. mines always different. I am executing 'xhost + localhost' as the first part of my alias. Just for grins I did a manual 'xhost +' and then signed on to root and tried nedit. It worked. So I have a similar situation as to the person above but their fix did not cure mine. Maybe "export XAUTHORITY=$USER/.Xauthority" before you su. Nope. Made things worse!!
Copied my .Xauthority over to /root. Everythings ok now.
Minor Note: Since we are on the subject, I kept getting "UTF8 locale not supported" everytime I executed Nedit. Found that I need to 'export LANG=en_US' but this was a problem with Oracle in the past. It required "unset LANG" in order to work.
Well, all is not well. The 'unset LANG' is ok but not the Xauthority. On reboot I went into root and tried Nedit. Got the following:
dusty-tr:/home/ctaylor # Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: Invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 key
NEdit: Can't open display
So, I guess those cookies are only good for one session. Hmmmmmm... I wonder what they changed cause I didn't have this problem in previous versions. From the looks of things on the Web, others are having the same problem. And some with different distributions.
# Allow remote access of the user root to your display manager
#
DISPLAYMANAGER_ROOT_LOGIN_REMOTE="yes"
Well now, look at what I found in that displaymanger file. It was no and I set it to yes. Darn. Didn't fix a thing. Ok now, there is another:
# Allow remote access to your display manager (kdm only for now)
# 
DISPLAYMANAGER_REMOTE_ACCESS="yes"
Another one set to no and I changed it to yes. Nope! Didn't fix anything either. Ok, let's see if SuSE has any updates. Since I don't seem to be the only one with this problem. There are some updates. I got them and new Nvidia drivers. Still no fix. I'm just gona have to use 'xhost +' for now till I have more time to investigate this problem. Must get back to the MySQL and PHP.
Arrrggg!!! Just hate it when this happens. I just fired up my 'puter for the first time today and guess what? I went into root and forgot to do the 'xhost +'. On a whim, I tried Nedit. It worked fine just like in the previous versions. Now, darn it, I am not sure what fixed it. At a later date I will back out my fixes and see when it breaks. But I strongly believe that it is the configuration settings.


29 July 2004 - Arrgg!! Double!!

    Evidently whilst fixing the above I also fixed the VMware/Homesite problem. On another whim, I get lots of these, I decided to see what would happen if I tried this combo again. I was entering into the Windows domain to use GTEdit (another favorite) and just decide to try Homesite again. This paragraph is being written inside it!! And I can save it. After I get this MySQL and PHP episode straight I will come back to this.. Yeah I know ... I should dump all the Windows stuff and just go straight to Linux. But I am after convience and ease of use... and what I am used to and like. After all this is a "Personal" Computer and I have my favorite aps. If and when they get converted to Linux I will switch over completely. Till then I will use both.. But alas, all is still not well. The save is only setting '740' perms. This presents problems, '744' perms are needed. This, I believe, is set in the Samba smbf.conf file, which I'll swear that I set with 755. Hmmmmmm... I did. However, this is another new version... 3.0 to be exact. As I have been playing with all this my smb.conf file was sometimes getting changed. There is a 'mask' and a 'mode' for the permission settings. I'll have to check out the difference... there is none! 'create mode' is a synonym for 'create mask'. (Later: during the setup of 9.2 I found the permission handling has been in the process of changing. 'Access Control Lists' are now being used and as a result things are more secure.)


Day 2 - 15 Jul 04

    Alllrighty now. Here we are on Day 2 and still do not have my apache server working. Nor can I use VMware. I looked around yesterday but didn't see anything intuitively obvious. One thing that I didn't think of yesterday was the 'qps' command. Dummy. I can use it to see what is running!! Apache/httpd is not!! Now then, in my perusing the net before I installed this I seem to remember seeing something about changes from apache 1.3 to apache 2. This change involved some directory changes. Now then, I did an 'update' and not a full install. Accodingly a number of my configuration files were kept... with 'old' values in them. Sooooo, I need to check out all of my Networking files to make sure that they are all looking in the correct place.

    Side Note: 'qps' by Mattias Engdegard is an excellent Process Manager. The processes are displayed in a tree format so you can readily see what processes are masters and slaves.

    Screen just went black, stayed that way for a sec and then came back. This happened to me once yesterday also. Hmmmmm. Need to investigate... later... or sooner if it becomes a problem. Right now we are working on apache. I just read something on the net that says there was a problem with apache starting cause of php. YOU possibly has a fix. When I did the install the 'update' portion at the end didn't run. For some reason it couldn't get connected to the Internet. Been meaning to run it. Guess now is as good a time as any.

Later - After YOU

    Ok now. I did the Yast Online Update and it got 60 items. A couple of them concerned Apache and a couple others the Kernel. After a restart I used 'qps' and saw that httpd was running. No, I haven't tried my local site yet... ok I just did and I can bring up my WebPage on my system locally. Hurrray!!!

    VMware still doesn't work but that is cause of the kernel change. I get the message about VMwate Workstation being installed but not correctly configured for the running kernel. So, I need to get the sources available and then run vmware-config.pl.
But ... first I must take care of my neighbors Dad's PC. Got an HP with WinXP that won't recover.
For the VMware portion see: VMware on 9.1

Netscape & Mozilla

    Just before I did the update from 9.0 to 9.1 I installed Mozilla. I wanted to see if it was an improvement over Netscape 7.1 or what. Well, it is an improvement. A big one. It also transferred over to the new install just fine.

New Filesystem - Submount

    More Windows like?!? Submount is a system for automatically mounting and unmounting removable media drives like cdroms and floppy disk drives. It works with the Linux 2.6 kernel series. Submount is a new attempt to solve the removable media problem for Linux. Its purpose is to automatically mount and unmount cd, floppy, and other removable media drives while remaining entirely invisible to the user.
    How I learned about this was in setting up my desktop. I liked to have the drive icons showing. After the update, the floppy and my DVD icons were not showing. In my attempts to place the floppy icon there I kept getting the icon indicating that it was already mounted. This was not good, or so I thought... wellll.. I still think it is not good. The current setup keeps the CDs, DVDs and Floppys mounted. Then it continually accesses them to see if they are still mounted! It also makes a number of the system ops slow down. Especially when reading the root dir. It tries to read all files and all the devices are considered files. I'm going to disengaged this as soon as I figure out how.

    I know I don't like it!! I put in a CD to copy data off of and when I wanted to remove it, the drawer wouldn't open. I used the 'eject' feature in the drop down menu and all it did was slide the draw out and immediately drag it back in. I had to practice a couple of times and I could get the CD in the quick time that the drawer was out and in. This is not good. Still have a ways to go on this feature..
The Removal Yes!! My system is now faster in reading the root dirs and I can properly remove my CDs and DVDs.

Shares & Permissions - 26 Jul 04

    These have changed... drastically as far as I am concerned. I have been able to squeeze in operation of VMware/Win2k but my favorite ap, Homesite, does not work. However, its big brother, Dreamweaver, does. This section is being written with Dreamweaver. I have had Dreamweaver for quite some time but I really like the text version Homesite uses. But, alas, I must prepare for another job that uses PHP and MySQL. I must study those and put this off till another time.

    

    

    

    

    


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