November 14th, 2012   Ok, Milestone 1 was uploaded to the openSuSE pages on Nov 8th. We never brought down Milestone 0. Didn't have time to play with it. We brought down the M1 to have a peek -and- then read the Forums. Doesn't look to promising. Think that we may wait till M2 or M3 before we start doing anything with this. Right now our Smartphone is more important -and- it is taking a lot of our time.

ChChChanges

We are collecting... info. Over the past couple of years... yes years, we have been experiencing problems... and getting extremely frustrated with... our nVidia Video Card and the Linux Systems. Kept thinking, and hoping, the 'Next Release' - from either nVidia -or- openSuSE would have 'the fix'. So far, neither has... and we are wondering IF Linus's outburst at nVidia ticked them off and they don't really care about the Linux Systems. Cause the Windows Systems do not seem to experience the same problems. -But- nothing like that would happen in the real world... now would it???

OK, Uncle!! October 25th, 2013/9:12am - The Fixes   There is lots and lots of info on this page (and most others since version 11.4) about our Video Problems -and- the various -and- final... fixes. Most of the info is in the VMware sections with the final fix in the VMware 10 section of this page. ... However, the "Biggest Fix" was my finally RTFM !!! IF you are here because you are chasing Video Problems, -and- especially with VMware, then make sure that your video card is; an nVidia 8800 GT -OR- an equivalent 'competitor'. (ATI 4850) Enjoy.

Anywho, this verbiage is being entered -after- the release and testing of the 12.3 Public Release below. We are gona finally setup a new Main System -and- one that we believe will hold in there. IF the latest nVidia Driver holds in there - fine... IF not, then we can use the latest nouveau Driver - which has gotten lots better. It is still not as good as the 'Native Driver' -but- the latest one is a whole lot better than the previous ones. This scenario has been plaguing us over the last '4' versions...

And along those lines... we have compiled a lot of info over the last '5' versions of openSuSE. We have repeated some, but not all, of the stuff from version to version. So, IF you have something that is bothering you, look in the other versions for a possible answer. -OR- jump over to our Home Page and use the 'site search' there. (Ooooops... forgot, we have a 'site search' up at the top left of this page. )

We tried, and failed, to install version 13.1 after our MotherBoard replacement. It would NOT co-operate. It was only a 'Beta' -but- we felt that it should have worked a little better. Anywho, we are re-installing this 12.3 version... and adding some things that we have found. These are items that we have not loaded before -or- forgot about them. That is the reason for this list.

1. apache2-doc
2. bind-doc
3. dhcp-doc
4. kernel-docs
5. php-doc
6. mtpaint
7. kdeartwork4-decorations
8. kdf
9. ktux
10. smb4k
11. gvim

Note:Because of ups and downs of our system, we also tried openSuSE 13.1 RC1. It was also a dismal failure. They have a lot more work to do -before- that can be released. We are once again installing our 12.3. October 15th, 2013 / 7:56am

Most interesting... the "OnLine UpDates" at the end of this install are almost like another install!! We think that "Everything" got UpDated!! After it finished it claimed that it had to restart. It did and became a black screen... requiring a PowerOff reset. This came back up finishing the install -or- so it appeared. We are at the Release Notes Screen. Clicked Next and it went to the Hardware Config Screen. Clicked on Next for this screen and got a Congratulations. Clicked on Finish and after a couple of Text screens we got the SignOn.

After signing on, we got a Desktop with the Folder in the upper left containing 5 icons and the SuSE Welcome Dialog. An available devices popped up in the lower right -but- not long enough for us to read it. We clicked on the Firefox icon and low and behold we could access the Internet again.
Note: The available item dialog was the 'normal' devices info when you put in a DVD/CD. We still had the install DVD in drive so... it was sensing it and telling us.

 October 2nd, 2013/8:17am  Quit last evening in utter disgust. Turned all 'puters off and went to bed... after a nightcap. Tried setting up VMware 8, which I'll swear didn't need the "Larry" fix -but- it did. Then it couldn't execute some command. No matter what we did, we couild NOT get VMware 8 to operate!!

Then this morning, after walking the dog, we decided to try it again. VMware 8 started right up!! Go figure.?.?. Once again something got 'fixed' and we don't know how.

 October 15th, 2013 / 8:01am  Continuing/Restarting the ReInstall. This is to be like a "New Install". Jump to ReInstall

Comments...

Alllllrighty now, the day has arrived and we brought down the 64-bit DVD version to be used ... eventually ... on our Desktop as our Main System. -And- we brought down the 32-bit version of the Live CD/DVD. It used to be a CD version -but- we guess that it got to large for the CD's and now is for a DVD -or- a USB Memory Stick. We only brought down the 32-bit of the Live DVD cause it will work on 'both' versions of computers that we are dealing with.

Now we have a decision to make. Do we replace 12.2 -or- not?? Why the decision?? Because we are STILL having difficulties with our Display. We have obtained the latest nVidia Driver, 304.84 from the March 4th, 2013 nVidia upload to their site -and- it appears that they have the Random Freezes fixed -but- now we can't use CTRL-ALT-Fx. All we get is a black empty screen. It is actually a "working" screen cause we carefully typed in some commands to create a directory -and- upon exiting with a CTRL-ALT-F7 we could see the dir that we created. We just can't see anything whilst we are doing it in one of the Virtual Screens. This happens on 'both' versions, 12.2 and 12.3. Soooooo... we are investigating. We will keep our current setup with 12.2 until we can find -or- obtain a fix. This is extremely frustrating. The Video problem has been plaguing us for over a year!!

In the meantime we will install the "Public Release" in our test area to test our "video card fix" findings. Hate this cause of the multiple setups -but- you must do what you must do.

  Note: March 15th, 2013 / 2:08am  Things have changed. We got it installed and then after a couple of 'newer' UpDates... the System died. So, we decided to test the 'UpDating/UpGrading' capabilities by installing version 12.2 and then Upgrading to version 12.3 ... in the test area. Probably won't be a lot of commenting for a while. This is gona be a big pain in the arse. We are gona have to get the 'Test' area as close to our 'Main' area as possible so that it can be a proper test. Oh darn... oh darn... did I ever tell you how much I HATE UpDates???? At the 'END' of the install, of 12.2, they claimed to have some "OnLine" UpDates. It looked like the UpDates were almost another intall!! Anywho, AFTER the UpDates the System crashed. Was finally able to use CTRL-ALT-DEL and it came back to the LogOn Screen. We finally got logged on... setting up the 12.2 version.

 Update: March 20, 2013 / 8:18am   Did we ever tell you how much we hate Computers and UpDates??? Ok.... How many times??     Anywho, we wanted to make note of our 12.2 install and then UpGrade to 12.3... in our Test Area.    It was a disaster!!

 What we learned.  The MAIN thing we learned is ... remove the 'old' Linux source code IF you have it installed. You 'might' even want to remove VMware -and- the nVidia Drivers also. That/Those, was/were where our biggest trouble/problems were experienced in the 'attempted' UpDate. We ARE gona make it our 'Main System' cause, even with the bad, we have had some very good experiences with this latest version. Again because of the "latest" nVidia and nouveau Drivers.
-And- a little side note -- we are, at the moment, editing this WebPage file, which is on the Laptop using Homesite from within Windows 2000 from within VMware 8 from within openSuSE 12.3 ... on our Desktop... from within our 'Test Area'. So, our Networking is working also.

We have moved over to the Laptop cause, we are gona start the "UpDate/UpGrade" operation... this time in our 'Main Area'.

1. First thing is to ReBoot into our current 'Main System' openSuSE 12.2.
2. Second thing is to ReMove the 12.2 Linux kernel sources and syms. This can be, and probably shouild be, done through Yast2. Now double check this cause not 'everything' gets removed. You may have to do some stuff manually... we did. Why did we need to do this??? Cause 'part' of our disaster mentioned above involved 'Updating' nVidia and VMware to the 'New' Linux -and- both involve compilation and insertion of code into the 'New' kernel. The 'System' and/or the 'Update/Upgrade' process got confused with two sources.
3. Third thing is to UnInstall VMware 8. This is done as follows:
   1. Open a konsole or xterm and log in to root as "su -"
   2. Stop VMware: /etc/init.d/vmware stop
   3. Uninstall the VMware Workstation. Type in:
      vmware-installer -u vmware-workstation
   4. AFTER changing to /usr/lib delete the VMware 8 directory by typing:
      rm -rf vmware
   5. After completely uninstalling 8.0.x workstation, uninstall vmnet and vmmon kernel modules:
      # modprobe -r vmnet vmmon
4. Fourth thing is to ReMove/UnInstall the nVidia Driver. ReBoot and Enter the CLI mode. Login in as 'root' and change to the dir that has the NVIDIA Drivers. Then execute:
       # sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-304.84.run -uninstall (or whatever version you have)
   
5. Edit the "/etc/sysconfig/kernel" file and change the "yes" to "no".
6. After changing the above file, do a "mkinitrd".
7. Now move to the /etc/modprobe.d dir and remove nvidia.* and 50-nvidia.*
8. Next we go to the /boot/grub2 dir and remove the 'nomodeset' from grub.cfg.
9. IF you changed the grub in /etc/default, change it back. IF you didn't, then you don't know what I'm talking about... so forget it.
   
   
10. OK. Place the openSuSE 12.3 Install DVD in your CD/DVD drive and ReBoot.
    
    
11. Upon BootUp select Installation.
12. On the Welcome Screen... click  Next .
13. On the Installation Mode Screen select 'Update an Existing System'... click  Next .
14. On the Select for Update Screen, select the "apropriate" Partition... click  Next .
15. Let it remove all the Repos... click  Next .
16. At the Installation Settings Screen... click  Update .
17. Wait... till it finishes. 12:06pm ... 12:41 - System ReBooted
18. DVD still in the drive... Boot from Hard Disk is default.
19. Well, it listed out lots and lots of stuff. Made complaints, mounted some drives and then hung after it checked the last SD Card Drive. Power Off at 12:50pm.
    
    
20. Power On at 12:51pm ... Reached 'target Graphical Interface' and died.
    
    
21. We CTRL-ALT-DEL'd it and then 'e' on the Hi-lited selction. Guess what?? It had 'nomodeset' on the linux line. We added a 3 and hit F10... eventually got to a login.
22. We logged in as 'root'. It remembered our passwd.
23. Edited /etc/sysconfig/kernel and put back to 'yes'.
24. Did a 'mkinitrd'.
25. Executed 'sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-304.84.run -aq'
26. Executed 'modprobe nvidia'
27. ReStarted with 'shutdown -r now'
28. It Booted up with the 'new' openSuSE 12.3 Login Screen.
    
    
29. We logged in and got to our Desktop... SUCCESS!
    Unfortunately, we must leave and 'Make the donuts.' (Gota pay for all this somehow)

 March 21, 2013 / 5:53am  We're baaackk... Left the 'puters Powered On and as they were when we left for 'work' last evening. So we will continue on from there. Hope this Laptop holds up... using it like another Desktop. Having it on for hours and hours... Hmmmmm... seems to us that we instructed one of our friends 'not' to do that...

30.  The Desktop  It is NOT correct. -But- we like it. What's wrong?? It is missing the "Desktop Folder" at the top. The interesting part is, we had a similar experience in one of our 'test' installs... only it was with the 'root' Desktop. Now then, we seem to remember some setting that can 'say' use the Desktop Folder -or- NOT. KDE UserBase
    Now then, even though it is NOT the correct default Desktop it 'DID' have our two XTerm Windows open -and- in the correct location both Horizontally -and- Vertically. However, all the 'icons' that were in the Desktop Folder are now lined up Vertically along the 'Right Hand' side of the Screen. It looks like a 'Normal' Desktop used to. (But then, what is a "Normal" Desktop???)
31.  .xinitrc  This is one item we carry over from version to version. We have used it since "Day 1" of our Unix/Linux involvements. In the beginning we did a 'lot' of Command Line work. So, we always had the System come up with at least two Terminal Windows...-and- we specified their size and location. We started experiencing troubles with it in openSuSE 12.2 -but- they "magically" went away. Now, in openSuSE 12.3 we had problems again and they didn't magically go away 'UNTIL' we installed 12.3 as an 'UpDate' over 12.2.    Go figure.?.?.
32.  Desktop again  Closer examination shows that the 'reason' we don't have the 'Destop Folder' is... the 'Whole Desktop' is the folder!! We right clicked on the Desktop and instead of one of the menu options being a 'Properties' selection it was a 'Folder View Settings' Selection. Then upon closer examination the items we had 'icons' for on the 12.2 Desktop were NOT there. Upon clicking the 'Folder View Settings' we see that the 'Layout' selection is 'Folder View'. We clicked on it and selected 'Default Desktop'. Clicked on 'Apply' and EVERYTHING disappeared!! Went back to 'Folder view' and we once again have most of what we had in 12.2.
    Hmmmmmm... we have caused 8 'Open with Dolphin' selections to be in the 'Right Click' menu for the Desktop.
33.  Got it!!  No... we do not know what we are doing. Only getting results. We tried to get the 'Desktop' back to an openSuSE 12.3 'Normal'. We Left clicked on the 'Show Activity Manager' box and got a couple of large icons in the Taskbar -or- Panel as it is called now. One of them is 'Desktop Icons' and the other is 'Desktop'. We messed around with the Purple 'Desktop' wrench and succeeded in getting the 'New' Proper Desktop. As stated in the beginning we are NOT really sure what we did -but- we now, once again, have a Desktop Folder in the upper right corner of our display -and- we have the other 'icons' that we wanted on the actual Desktop.
34.  Desktop Settings -and- Installs  The 'icon' for VMware 8 is bogus which we would expect... We removed it!! nedit works!! qps works!! quanta does not!! Thunderbird works!! So we need to Re-Install VMware 8 and quanta. Not to bad.
         Quanta Re-Install -- done
         VMware 8 Re-Install
    We forgot to Re-Install Linux Sources. Will do that now through Yast2.   And we need to make the little alteration in the source files... this is courtesy of Larry Finger @ http://www.lwfinger.com/nvidia_patches/
    

    cd /lib/modules/3.7.10-1.1-desktop/build/include/ (numb in red could be different)
    ln -s generated/uapi/linux
    'ls linux' should show version.h
    

    Ok. It works -- Done.
    Nope. One more thing....

    The problem, IF it can be called one, is libcanberra. VMware can not find it -but- it still loads up and works. It appears that libcanberra has something to do with sound.

    Allllrighty now... we have an answer. This library is primarily for GNOME. We are using KDE and it is NOT needed. So, we edit the:
         /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/libcanberra-gtk-module.sh
    file and add:
         unset GTK_MODULES
    just before the:
         export GTK_MODULES
    This eliminated those error messages at startup and sound works fine!

35.  Networking  It Works!!! Our JFileSync worked 'without' any further setup. It was working in 12.2 -and- now still is in 12.3. We 'captured' some portions of screens on the Desktop and then passed them over to our Laptop via JFileSync. This is great and getting greater!!
36.  Appearance: Update vs New Install  Now they look different. Should they??? We don't know -but- the defaults selected in the 'New Install' are rather bland. However, we are not all that pleased in the 'Update' results either.

    New Install	Update/Upgrade
    BootUp Bottom Green Line	Displays all the BootUp Text... think that is cause we dumped the 'quiet' parameter.
    The Clock - Dark Transparent.	Clock became Dark and Transparent. This was/is because of Desktop Theme 'openSUSE'.  'Air openSUSE' got rid of the Dark!!
    Terminal Windows - Rounded Corners -and- top of screen	Terminal Windows down in the correct locations. Corners square. Believe 'part' of the differences are because we selected a different theme... it is.
    Wallpaper - The SuSE default Black with Green Plant	Same default -but- we changed it. Don't like all the darkness everyone is getting into anymore. We chose the 'Bright' Light and Line Red/Blue.
    'VMware Workstation' on two lines under icon	'VMware Works...' on one line under icon
    Desktop Folder black	At first none, then the black one. Haven't found the setting to change it... yet. We did. Change the 'Desktop Theme'.
    Taskbar - Leave Lock small stacked	Leave Lock changed to small stacked
    Network Management	???

37.  March 24th, 2013 /7:46pm  We have a new VMware 8 and are going to install it. Jump to VMware. Because we did it above we don't have to put in the little "patch" for the Linux 3.7.10 code. If you are following this and didn't doit already, go back a couple of steps.
    Alllllrighty now, as of 10:38pm we have InStalled the LATESET:
    • openSuSE 12.3
    • nVidia 304.84
    • VMware 8.0.6
    Now we will try to "Use it Normally" and hope that it doesn't Freeze up on us. More Info will be entered as we work with it, that is why there are empty spaces. Our WebPages are 'never' done... or so it seems.
38.    
39.    

 March 24th, 2013 / 7:30pm  Our disc usage thus far is as follows:

dusty-tr2:/windows/D # df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs        1.8G   56K  1.8G   1% /dev
tmpfs           1.8G   84K  1.8G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs           1.8G  888K  1.8G   1% /run
/dev/sda6        47G  8.5G   38G  19% /
tmpfs           1.8G     0  1.8G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs           1.8G  888K  1.8G   1% /var/lock
tmpfs           1.8G  888K  1.8G   1% /var/run
/dev/sdb5        16G  3.0G   13G  19% /windows/L
/dev/sdb1       264G  142G  123G  54% /windows/D
/dev/sda10       81G  4.0G   76G   5% /RC2-home
/dev/sda9        21G  6.9G   13G  36% /RC2-root
/dev/sda7       203G   16G  186G   8% /home
dusty-tr2:/windows/D #

Two of our Drives are NOT listed cause we did not include them in our fstab. They are:
     /dev/sda1, which is our Windows C: Main Drive and
     /dev/sda2, which is our Windows E: RECOVERY Drive.

CPU Information
  Processor (CPU):   Intel® Pentium® D CPU 3.20GHz
  Speed:             3,200.89 MHz - 3.2GHz
  Cores:             2

Memory Information
  Total memory (RAM):  3.4 GiB
  Free memory:         1.1 GiB (+ 1.7 GiB Caches)
  Free swap:           4.9 GiB

Our system environment is the same as in our openSuSE 12.1 setup.

 March 13th, 2013 / 10:37am  As mentioned above we brought down the PR. Now we'll create an Install DVD. -And- we are gona move a lot of the 'lower' stuff (in this WebPage) up here. It is all relatively the same and to save space we are gona combine. We will 'try' to make notes where there are important differences -but- there are not many. The main one is the Video. The editing of this step will start out on our Laptop. We have had very, very little trouble with it... in fact none. Probably cause our main, and perhaps only, use of it has been for these 'notes'. After all they are called "Notebook" Computers.

Partitions 5, 6 and 7 are for our "Normal" boot-up System. Parts 8, 9 and 10 are for our 'test' System. Need to keep that straight.
Note: Our opinion of Grub2 has been changing. Described here and will not be repeated. -And- it is continually changing... depending on our successes.

Ya know what...??? We think that IF this is successful that we may just use it to "Update/Upgrade" our current 12.2 instead of a full install. That way we won't have to Re-Load and Re-SetUp our Main System. Giving that strong considerations.

1. Disk is inserted -- and we re-boot... and choose Installation.
2. Loads the Kernel...
3. We see a text screen flash by and then 3 shades of green line growing along the bottom.
4. We are presented with the Welcome Screen and the License... we accept the English Language -and- the English keyboard... click Next.
5. Installation Mode: New Installation. NO! on Auto Config... click Next.
6. Initializing... and then we get the Clock and Time Zone screen. We pick Phoenix, AZ USA and -NO- to use the UTC... Date and time look correct... click Next.
7. Desktop Selection - KDE Desktop... click Next
8. Suggested Partioning... we change via Edit Partition Setup...
   • /dev/sda     465.76GB    WDC
   • /dev/sda1     98.33GB      NTFS       HP_PAVILION
   • /dev/sda2     7.30GB        FAT        HP_RECOVERY
   • /dev/sda3     360.14GB    Extended
   • /dev/sda5     2.44GB        Linux swap
   • /dev/sda6     47.43GB      Linux Ext4   /SuSE12.2root
   • /dev/sda7     205.39GB    Linux Ext4   /SuSE12.2home
   • /dev/sda8     2.44GB        Linux swap
   • /dev/sda9     20.69GB      Linux Ext4   /
   • /dev/sda10    81.73GB      Linux Ext4   /home
   • /dev/sdb     279.46GB    ST33
   • /dev/sdb1     263.85GB    HP_PAVILION_D   /windows/D
   • /dev/sdb2     15.61GB     Extended
   • /dev/sdb5     15.61GB     FAT L_DRIVE       /windows/L
9. Create New User: NO on use same password for system admin and NO for Auto Login.
10. Password for System Admin "root"
11. Installation Settings:
      Partitioning: As above.
      Booting -> Boot Loader Options
     We 'Un-checked' both Set Active and Write the MBR. NO WE DIDN't!! We decided to let it do its thing and then fix afterwards.
    Grub2 Info
12. Software: We used the 'Detailed' version and selected what we wanted.
    1.  Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment  xscreensaver
       ScreenShots
    2.  X Window System  MozillaThunderbird, wine
    3.  Multimedia  audacity, timidity
    4.  Graphics  dia
    5.  Console Tools  makedev
    6.  Web and Lamp Server apache2, apache2-prefork, apache2-mod_perl, apache2-mod_php5, apache2-mod_python, php5-ctype, php5-dom, php5-gd, php5-iconv, php5-mysql, php5-zip
    7.  DHCP and DNS Server  bind, dhcp-server, dhcp-tools, YaST2-dhcp-server, YaST2-dns-server
    8.  Base Development  gcc, gcc-c++, glibc-devel, make, patch
    9.  Intergrated Development Environment  cervisia, kdevelop4, kate
    10.  Java - jedit  
    11.  Linux Kernel Development cscope, ctags, indent, kernel-source, kernel-syms, patchutils
    12.  Web Developement  apache2-mod_tidy, kfilereplace, kimagemapeditor, klinkstatus, tidy
13. Firewall & SSH - Disable. Messes with our VMware.
14. Install.... and first reboot.
      Warning   Be there!! And take the DVD out BEFORE the ReBoot!! 
15. What we learned from before -and- now is;.... NOTHING!!!
    In this PR we let it go and do its thing and then upon the 'First' reboot it got as far as the dim green plant and Gecko screen -and- stopped!! We had to "Power Off" ReSet. We removed the DVD -before- the Power Off. Upon restoring power, it got to that screen again -but- this time it continued. At the "Hostname and Domain Name" screen, it paused for us to enter/change the info. At this time we reinserted the DVD.
    These were the learnings from before... might be good to know, or remember.
    We must remove the DVD, let it boot from the HD into 12.2 and perform another:
        # grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
    and then another:
        # grub2-install /dev/sda
    and then a re-boot... at the GRUB2 screen use an arrow key to halt it and select the test Partition... ie; 12.3. Then before continuing, put the DVD back in the drive and hit the Enter key.
    Refer: My Grub2 Info
    We learned more -and- things have changed. Upon the install just let it go. Yes it will over-write the MBR -but- that can be easily fixed after the install. Because of the way this new Grub2 works at the end of the install and then a re-boot, you will have a choice of Operating Systems to boot-up. You can leave it like it is -or- you can boot into the previous SuSE System and run the above mention Grub2 commands and get things back to "normal".
16. Hostname and Domain - dusty-tr2 / TRComputing
    NO to change hostname via DHCP
17. Network Config - Everything looks good ... use it.
18. Test Internet connection - Success... in the PR... had Failed in some earlier MileStones... Next.
19. Loading the Package Manager... hmmmmm... this is interesting. It appears to be downloading software!! Reason for our astonishment is... in the earlier MileStones, even though it said it failed it still brought down the Packages.
20. Online update - Do it... accept patches... Next
    Oh Darn!! Don't remember IF it was here the Update Crashed us or later. Do it!! This time we are taking note! Ok, whilst waiting for these UpDates to install we read ahead -and- the crash was after the install was complete. Maybe this time around it will get all the UpDates... now!
21. Release notes... /usr/share/doc/release-notes
    Read them this time and there is some important info in there.
22. Hardware config... Looks OK... As usual, it found our TV card and installed ivtv-firmware -but- this time not ivtv... Next.
23. Saves Hardware info and then -- Congrats... clicked on  Finish .
24. Got to the 'initial' LogOn. Looks good... Date and Time are correct. Logged onto the System.
25. We have a Desktop.
26. Immediately Re-Booted and could get back to the New System Logon... once again.
27. Entered our info and we are once again at the Desktop.
28. We have a System ... (in the test area)

OK. Sound works right off... no fixin' needed. We must go to 'work' so for the First time in days ... we are shuting down both Systems.

Skip this... initial try was another disaster... and jump to March 14th...

 Special Install - March 15th, 3013   Well, we have a copy of version 12.2 installed in our test area. It doesn't have everything -but- it has the important stuff. nVidia Driver and VMware 8. Now we will try the "UpDate/UpGrade" route.

At the select Mode we are selecting 'Update and Existing System'. Still saying 'NO' to Auto Config. Next we get achoice of two Partitions.
   openSuSE 12.2 on /dev/sda6 -or- openSuSE 12.1 on /dev/sda9
We 'want' the second one. Hopefully this will understand the Partition /dev/sda10 is home for this and NOT /dev/sda7.

Next and it wants to remove all the 'Repos'. We just clicked Next and we arrive at the "Installatin Settings" Screen. Looks like the only choice is to Update -or- not. So we clicked on the Update. ooommmm... did I ever say how much I hate Updates .

 March 15th, 2013 / 5:22pm Ok. We have an Update. It was NOT smooth and cool. It removed and installed the world and then it ReBooted. It got to the dim Green Plant ... and stayed. After about 45min we tried CTRL-ALT-BKSP and CTRL-ALT-DEL to no avail. So, it was the ol' Power Off ReSet. At Power On it Booted Up and we got a System. We think.

Well, it didn't keep our new nVidia Driver -but- we had the smooth movement like we did once before after an update. Seems it keeps some of the nVidia Driver. -But- the display is NOT crisp. It has vertical bold and less bold sections. I'm sure there is a better description but that is the best we can do for now. Anywho, we are gona try to 'UpDate' the driver to our latest nVidia one (304.84)

-And- VMware 8 did not get UpDated. Couldn't find the headers. Needs that 'fix'. Ok, we put in the fix, which is described down a little lower, and then when we started it all it said was that we had to compile some modules for the running kernel... which we expected. After all there was kernel upgrade in this. Oh darn, oh darn! It couldn't execute the compile.
Oh! Oh! The /usr/src dir contains the 'old' and the 'new'. UpDates are NOT clean. We will go back to a FULL clean install -- AND MAKE SURE WE SKIP THE UPDATES AT THE END!! There is going to be just as much fussing with the 'UpDates' as there is with Re-Loading all the stuff again. Minor UpDates 'may' be ok -but- NOT major ones.

 ARRGGGHHH!!!  Went back to our 12.2 version and in bringing up VMware we had our FIRST Random Freeze with this newest, 304.84, nVidia Driver. So, it looks like we must use the nouveau Driver IF we want to get anything done. -And- it must be the latest. We need to figure out a proper set of 'tricks' to get the nouveau operations smoother. Having the nVidia Driver previously installed seems to be the key.

 Setting Up the System - March 14th, 2013 / 3:58am  Ok, we are back. Powered on the Systems and the Desktop came up just fine in our new openSuSE 12.3. The Laptop is still just a straight Windows 7 machine.

Personal Things to setup:

• .xinitrc Our script which will open two terminals on boot-up
• .bashrc put in our own version which calls the next two.
• .alias Personal abbrev's
• .function More complicated personal abbrev's
• set_tr A bash script copied to /bin which will let us set our .alias and .function to be used while we are in root.

 At 4:49am   The reasons for the following settings are... we like to get more than one operation from the "Launcher" icons on the Task Bar. And there are some operations that we want quick access to. And a few other settings...

• Put Stop and Lock on Task Bar.
• Removed Firefox and Dolphin Launcers. (left them in the 'root' screen)
• Installed Firefox and Dolphin applications on Task Bar. (user screen only)
• Installed Screen Capture on Task Bar.
• Placed YaST2 launcher on Task Bar.
• StartUp and ShutDown - Set on LogIn Session to start empty.
• Install 'Cat' Blocker - Screen Saver with PassWord!! So,when she walks on the KeyBoard it won't mess up what we're doing!!
• Placed VMware 8 Launcher Icon on Desktop... well, we will when it is installed.
• Copied over our saved Personal bin dir and our gif dir with our icons and stuff.
• Copied over our saved Personal dir and our PersonalDoc dir.
• Copied over our saved gnu-linux-tools-summary dir and our saved RPMCheatSheet.html
• Copied over our saved scripts dir and our saved sounds dir.
• UNcheck the 'Align to Grid' in Desktop Folder.
• Added Icons for WinDrvD and WinDrvL to Desktop Folder... Quick Access. And changed the icons to Windows type Drive Icons... just because.

 At 5:27am  Setup special 'root' Task Bar operations:

• Put Stop and Lock on Task Bar.
• Removed Firefox and Dolphin Launcers.
• Installed Firefox and Dolphin applications on Task Bar.
• Added 'root' as a LogIn choice.
• Copied a saved Red Background to /usr/share/wallpares to be used in 'root' and installed it. 'root' background is now Red.
• Placed YaST2 launcher on Task Bar.
• set_tr - A bash script copied to /bin which will let us set our .alias and .function to be used while we are in 'root'.
• In apache2 - renamed httpd.conf and mod_userdir.conf and replaced them with our own versions.
• In samba - renamed smb.conf and replaced it with our own.
• Copied inxi to /usr/bin.
• In /etc - renamed DIR_COLORS and copied in our own.
• In /etc - renamed hosts file and copied in our own.
• Edited fstab - to use NTFS and to get proper read/write perms on D.

Well, all is NOT well. We were logging out, so we could jump over and check out the 'root' portion, -and- in the process of trying to log out we got an 'Error Dialog' stating:

We are sorry, KWIN closed unexpectedly.
You can help us improve KDE Software by reporting this error.
Learn more about bug reporting.

Note: It is safe to close this dialog if you do not wnat to report this bug.

Details:
Executable: kwin PID: 2514 Signal: Segmentation fault (11)

 At 5:47am  New 'Sound' warning in 'root'at SignOn. Will have to investigate this. Other than that, the 'root' operations look good.
On loggingout from 'root' we did NOT get the KWIN error. -And- then upon logging back in to our 'user' area we did NOT get the Sound warning.

Ok, back in our user area and still under the nouveau Driver, we are gona try the CTRL-ALT-F1. OK... It works... with the nouveau Driver.

 At 8:22am  Alllllrighty now. We have just setup Firefox with 'our' Bookmarks and the Bookmarks menu bar. And we have linked our "Local WebPages" to our home dir so that we can view them in Firefox whilst we are building them. -But- can not access the 'local' pages... yet.
Ah!! Need to check the IP Addresses. Ok, the Laptop and the 12.3 Desktop are correct.
Ooooohhh yeah!!! Make sure Apache2 and Samba are running!! ... and they are not!! Fortunately, they put back the System Runlevel editing in YaST2. We were able to get apache2 and Samba up and running. -And- now we can access our WebPages "Locally".

 At 11:10am  Ok, it appears that we have the preliminary operations in hand. Now let's see IF we can get the latest nVidia Driver and VMware 8 installed and running. We will try out the VMware 8 installation and setup first. After all, we want to see IF it will still work with the latest nouveau Driver.

 VMware 8 Mar 14th, 2013 / 11:33am  Another one of those "Lost" version.h problems.

The problem is caused by three things:
1. The upstream 3.7 kernel moved version.h from include/linux to
include/generated/uapi/linux 
2. the nVidia 310.19 driver still misses at least one change to
 support that move. 
3. If you are running kernel-desktop, you should have installed
kernel-desktop-devel and NOT kernel-default-devel

cd /lib/modules/3.7.10-1.1-desktop/build/include/ (numb in red could be different)
ln -s generated/uapi/linux
'ls linux' should show version.h

Fired up VMware for the first time from within our HomeDir, in a terminal, with /usr/bin/vmware. It ran ok except for the complaint about 'libcanberra-gtk-module.so' not being found. Please see: openSuSE 12.2 VMware

• Entered our license.
• exited...
• Created vmware dir.
• Untar'd our saved Win2k... into the newly created vmware dir.
• Restarted VMware
• Clicked on "Open a Virtual Machine"
• Inside our new vmware dir we have our retored Win2000Pro dir which contains Win2000Pro.vmx. We selected it and clicked open.
• We closed the 'Library' panel and then clicked on "Power on this virtual machine".
• OK! It came up and worked fine... with one exception. We forgot to setup the SMB user and password.
• Exit and perform: smbpasswd -a username (as 'root')
• Restart VMware -and- it crashed with a
  'Kernel panic - not syncing: Watchdog detected hard LOCKUP on cpu 1
  
• We had to 'Power Off' reset.
• In our 'Setups' we instructed the system to start with an 'Empty Session' which it did.
• Our fault. Didn't properly 'Enable' apache2 and samba and they were not running.
• Start up again...
• Fired up Windows Explorer and looked at the Network. Ok, can see it all.
• Did some editing of our WebPages, which are on another drive, and things went ok. So, we are looking good.
• Added VMware 8 startup icon to Desktop.

 March 17th, 2013 / 9:07am  Alllllrighty now... we have another Fully Working System in the Test Area again.

Jump to Redo-1

 nVidia Driver at 5:18pm  Ok now. We have the 'acid' test. Will the "latest" nVidia Driver install and properly work in this PR version?? We have two ways of installing and hopfully the one way is through YaST2. IF they have it in the 12.3 repos. They do... they do have the repos. For a couple other things too, like KDE and Mozilla.

Well, the version that they have in the repo, which will be used by YaST2, is 304.64. This still had the Random Freezes. So, we will do it the "Hard Way". Which isn't all the hard...just a pain. Well, not really that either. Oh, just do it. Jump down to the nVidia section.

 March 15th, 2013 / 1:46am   Sometimes you just can win for loosin'. We let the "latest" Updates get installed and they crashed our system. So far, it looks like an unrecoverable state... for the openSuSE 12.3 portion. We get to
   Target Graphical User Interface
and it stops. This last time it responded to CTRL-ALT-DEL. Prior to that we had to 'Power Off' ReSet. We are just gona re-install it!! However, whilst in this delima we started thinking, let's load up and install version 12.2 in our test area and then, and then UpDate/UpGrade it to 12.3. That way we can test 'two' things. The new system -and- how it works for 'Upgrading' our current to the new. Sounds like a plan.

 October 16th, 2013 / 5:23am   Allllllrighty now, we are just gona jump in here months later and state that we have finally pulled our head out and are getting somewhere. We finally really dug into this 'lockup' problem and found that it was because we were pushing our Video Card beyond its limts!! This is stated elsewhere many times, primarily at the points where we were complaining about the 'Lockups'. At any rate, the 'fix' was to get an nVidia GeForce GTX 560 and replace our GeForce 7300 LE with it. More details can, and will, be found in other areas of discussion. IF you are really interested just search for the 560.

 March 17th, 2013 / 1:17pm  Ok we took a break and now we are gona try the nVidia Driver again. Only this time 'NO' to ANY UpDates!! Once again, jump down to the nVidia section.

 March 17th, 2013 / 2:32pm   Alllllrighty now!! We are back in business -- in the Test Area. Want to see how all this works together -before- we make it our new Main.

 March 18th, 2013 / 1:18am Networking ops... see Networking.

 VISTA - April 9th, 2013 / 4:17am  We are going to try, no we are going to Re-Install our Windows Vista inside our VMware 8. This is actually a ReStore cause we saved a 'Previous' Install. Just have to see IF it still works -or- IF we are gona have to go through the whole install mess again.

1. Well, the first notice we got was that our 'VMware Tools' was out of date.
2. Next we got a Vista Logon Screen with our UserID... entered Passwd and logged on.
3. A Desktop appears. Not the correct size for our 'New' wide format -but- we are in.
4. It doesn't remember our 'Network' setup. It is asking us to select a location. We are going to cancel this and do it later.
5. Now we have the 'Welcome Center'... and through it we find that our 'Vista' is setup as a '32-bit' Operating System. -And- that is all that is on the Install Disc.
6. Ok. Homesite is already installed on it -and- it appears that the last time it was used was openSuSE 11.2.
7. Now we need to set the screen to our new 1280x720 format.
8. Ah! It is set for 'Two Processors'. We found that does not work properly. Even though we have a dual core, we must still only say it is one.
9. Updated VMware Tools and on the required reboot we did NOT get the request for a 'Network' setup again. Maybe the new tools fixed it.?.
10. Allllllrighty now!! We have Win Vista installed and UpDated. Appears to work -and- most importantly, we DID NOT get any FreezeUps!!

Well with the previous success in hand, we are gona install Windows 7. The install disc has -both- '32-bit' and '64-bit' versions. We are gona pick the '64-bit' version. After we take a break and walk the dog.

 WINDOWS 7 - April 9th, 2013 / 7:42am   As mentioned above, Vista was a '32-bit' Install. We got it 'free' cause of our purchase of our 'Desktop' so close to the Vista Release. Like it was 5 days!! Anywho, HP gave us a 'Free Update'. This Windows 7 we purchased, originally for my wife's 'new' machine -but- because of the Printer we didn't install it. That's another story over in our Windows section... IF you are interested.
Check out ReadyBoost.

1. Win 7 will be installed inside VMware 8.
2. Win 7 is 'Two' discs - one '32-bit' and one '64-bit'.
3. It 'IS' an 'UpGrade' and we can't remember IF we had to load it over a 'Previous' install of Vista or not.
4. Created a 'blank' System Disc of 40GB and 1GB of RAM.
5. Put in DVD, PowerOn - it is Loading... it is Starting.
6. ... it is Installing!! -And- it installed!!
7. User Name: ctaylor - Computer Name: dusty-tr7
8. Pass Word - Well... it's a secret..
9. Activate - Product key --- IT WON'T!!! -- ARRRGGGHH!!
   The product key is for an upgrade version of Windows 7 and a previous version of Windows wasn't on your computer when Windows 7 was installed. To install an upgrade version of Windows 7, Windows Vista or Windows XP must be installed on your computer. If you formatted the drive before starting the installation process, you won't be able to use the upgrade product key to activate Windows 7. To activate Windows 7, you'll need to install your previous version of Windows, and then reinstall Windows 7.
10.  There is a way!!   A Loophole Even though it says it is for Vista, it will work for Windows 7.
11. 1:38pm -- We have success.
12. Windows 7 information will be continued here .

 March 1st, 2013 / 8:07pm  Ok, we brought RC2 down on the day it was released -but- did not get it installed until today. The install went flawless, from beginning till the end, from a successfully created DVD. Now to set it up for ourselves. Notes in the following will be made for any difficulties. Nothing said... nothing different. DVD creation was performed in openSuSE 12.2.

Alllllrighty now, we brought down the latest version and then created, -or- we should say, recreated our DVD. The first pass was NOT successful. Had errors on the verification portion. So, we rubbed the disc on our shirt, blew the drive out with an air can, -and- re-did it. The second time verified ok. So, the MD5SUM and the re-creation are all supposed to be correct...now. Creation was performed in openSuSE 12.2.

 February 8th, 2012 / 9:58am  Well, due to the above mentioned disc problems, and car troubles, and had to go to work, -and- had to sleep... just getting around to this today. -But- even today we will be interrupted with our honey do list. We're sure that most of you have experienced this. -But- before going off to do those things we will try to get started. Well, actually, we will first synchronize our two machines and switch to the Laptop for further note taking and editing of this file... since this machine, the Desktop, will be unusable during the update.

 Later - 3:36pm  Well, we had an enjoyable interuption. Our friend Allen, from England, stopped by to visit. He is in the states for the Month of February visiting his children, who still live here. Anywho, back to work -or- fun... depending.

Now we want to use the new DVD we created for the install since the file brought down -and- the creation are good. Now the first time, or two, we had some problems with our "triple boot". Hopefully, this one will go better. Partitions 5, 6 and 7 are for our "Normal" boot-up System. Parts 8, 9 and 10 are for our 'test' System. Need to keep that straight.
Note: Our opinion of Grub2 has been changing. Described here and will not be repeated.

 Febuary 9th, 2013 / 3:07am  Ok now, our first StartUp was successful. We have our desktop which is blackish with the usual green for the drawings. -But- we must stop. It is the Sabbath and we have done to much already. The rest will have to wait.

 February 10th, 2013 / 8:34am - March 4/7th / 1:30PM Ok now, we are back at it. First thing to do is setup our usual "Personal" stuff. One of them being our .xinitrc. We'll see if they got it fixed yet.
Personal Things to setup:

• .xinitrc Our script which will open two terminals on boot-up
• .bashrc put in our own version which calls the next two.
• .alias Personal abbrev's
• .function More complicated personal abbrev's
• set_tr A bash script copied to /bin which will let us set our alias and function to be used while we are in root.

Ah, the time is correct -but- no sound.
We have had this problem in RC2 also... however, that was on our 'first' attempt with our 'first' download. Because of our experiences we thought that something was not right. We were one of, IF not 'the first', to download this software. The Web Page and the whole operation just didn't feel right... -but- we brought it down anyway. Then after the disasterous first istall... we decided to download it again. This second one is installing 'much' better. -And- we got sound right off! And this is the March 4th install.

 Added: 11:39am nouveau  Well, well, this Open Source Driver gets better and better. This latest version has a lot smoother window movement. Almost as clean as the Normal nVidia Driver. When you click and hold on the title bar and drag the window around it is smooth in movement. NOT jerky like it used to be. Hopefully we won't get any screen freezes on this one either. Next test is to see IF it will run our VMware 8 with no problems. Move into 'root' and execute:
    sh VMware-Workstation-Full-8.0.5-893925.x86_64.bundle
The installation was apparently successful. Now to see if it works.

Fired up VMware for the first time from within our HomeDir with /usr/bin/vmware. Oh darn!! It could not find the Kernel Headers. There appears to be a problem with kernel 3.7.

....See PR section...

Ok, now it found the headers but could not find: libcanberra and then there was a YaST2 callup problem after the above attempt.

Had to completely ReStart in order to perform the compile. Not on the March 4th version.

 March 1st, 2013 / 9:24pm  Similar problem in RC2. -But- after the "version.h" fix it installed and compiled with no other problems. Well, it couldn't find libcanberra. But it complied.

 At 2:56am  Ok. We now have the VMware 8 screen up in front of us. We will
      "Create a New Virtual Machine".
    Memory:        512MB
    Processors:       1
    Hard Disk(SCSI):     6GB   0:1
    CD/DVD (IDE):     drive /dev/sr1   0:0
    CD/DVD 2 (IDE):   drive /dev/sr0   1:0
We select that we will install the Operating System later. This will create a virtual machine, Win2000Pro, with a blank hard disk to which we will copy (untar) our saved Win2K.

 March 1st, 2013pm / 10:12pm  We could NOT get VMware 8 to work with our "saved" Win2K. We shouldn't be working on this now anyway. It is the Sabbath and we need to quit.  March 4th, 2013 / 2:10pm   On this second install we changed things a little bit. Instead of creating a virtual machine we just untared our saved one.
Hooooray!! It works!! We place our first try problems in a curse for working on the Sabbath. Here on this 'normal' workday, the Lord blessed us and it is working.

Allllrighty now, it, our Win2K, came up in our 'newly devised' wide screen format and no complaints about the video. So the nouveau Driver is still working.

 No Sound / 10:38am However, we have no sound. Just re-booted - because we had moved over to SuSE 12.2 so we could synchronize our WebPages. Upon entry we got a message that there are 127 Updates!! Hmmmmm... maybe one of more of those will fix our sound problem. So, we will postpone anything else till we do the Updates.
Sound worked right off in the last install of RC2.

 At 4:56pm   Using Zypper to do the Updates. We like the new progress indication. -But- unfortunately, it did not fix our .xinitrc problem. Nor did it fix our sound problem.
Over to root.

Now this is very interesting. We had this sound problem in M2 and the test was to go to root, see if we have sound and if so delete the sound in our normal user and re-install it. Well, we went to root to test it and sure enough we had sound. -But- upon LogOut and LogIn of the User we also had sound..?? -But- we Re-Started and once again we do not have sound in the Normal User. So, we will delete -or- uninstall the sound and then re-install it.

Check if installed:
   rpm -q alsa alsa-utils alsa-firmware
Install if not:
   zypper install alsa-firmware
After alsa-firmware is installed, restart your machine, or otherwise make sure the kernel's sound modules are reloaded, because rcalsasound won't do this itself. Check your sound (see STEP-1 below), and if need be, start the ALSA service with the command below, type in a konsole/xterm:
   rcalsasound start

HOME-LINUX:/usr/share/sounds # cd freedesktop/stereo/
HOME-LINUX:/usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo # ln -s service-login.oga desktop-login.oga
  However: KDE from version 4.6 and upwards depends on libcanberra for Pulseaudio Speaker 
  Setup Page.

 Feruary 11th, 2013 / 6:52pm We could get audio as 'root' -but- NOT as a Regular User. To fix this we had to delete our card from the setup and then re-install it.
Per: SDB:Audio troubleshooting
Still no sound -- ?? Delete the card and re-install it. With Edit NOT Add.
Vendor - Intel
Card model - 82801G(ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller

Well, it isn't working right. Have to go into root first and then back to regular user. Then the sound will work... for regular.

See Personal Stuff in PR section.

 February 12th, 2012 / 9:04am  Well, we have our initial setup -and- we know that it works. This is a lot of hassle only to have it wiped out in a couple of weeks, or so, for the final version... and then do all this again. We know that the nouveau Driver will not freeze on us so now... now we are gona give the nvidia Driver a shot. Maybe it will work better with this 3.7 version of the kernel.

Release Notes are found in /usr/share/doc/release-notes. You might want to read them as well as the info presented here. Number "4. System Upgrade" concerning NetworkManager in particular. This was pointed out by member "cloddy" in the Comment Thread on our openSuSE forums.

 Networking smb & nmb  Not enabled by default and that was the reason we could not access our WebPages over on WinDrvL. apache2 was not enabled either.
 What we need:  

1. apache2 - running and started in runlevels 3 & 5
2. dnsmasq - running and started in runlevels 3 & 5
3. nmbd - running and started in runlevels 3 & 5
4. smbd - running and started in runlevels 3 & 5
5. smbpasswd -a username (as root)
6. NO Apparmor!!!
7. NO Firewall!!!

• samba-client-3.6.12-59.2.1.x86_64
• yast2-samba-client-2.23.1-2.1.2.noarch
• yast2-samba-server-2.23.1-1.2.2.noarch
• samba-client-32bit-3.6.12-59.2.1.x86_64
• samba-3.6.12-59.2.1.x86_64

 March 5th, 2013 / 8:02am  Yeah, we're slow. Anywho, we didn't pay to much attention to the Release Notes... just like a lot of others... and in them is some info about a 'change' in the Network Operations!!

Do not just copy the following items over from your saved area -or- another System. The necessary paths do not get set and placing them in a different place doesn't work correctly. Main problem we had was with nedit. We just copied over the version from our SuSE 12.2 -and- it worked -but- it did not show up in any of the menus. Similar to Windows, apps installed in Linux get "registered" that they are there and available. This is one of the 'install' actions. Linux doesn't have a centralized registry like Windows does. For most programs, configuration settings are in text files, which is nice because you can edit them and tweak them more easily than poking around in regedit. Machine specific configs are typically stored in the /etc directory tree. User specific settings are typically in the users' home directory and often in "hidden" files that start with a "." This approach is simple and robust: mess up a config file in Linux, and it only breaks the app that uses that config file. Mess up the registry in Windows, and you'll be pulling out the install CD.

•  Nedit   nedit installed from RPM nedit-5.5-31.1.x86_64.rpm originally found at: RPMpbone.net   Inorder to use it, we had to install openmotif-libs which contained libXm.so.4 required by nedit.
•  QPS  qps Installed from RPM qps-1.10.16-5.6.x86_64.rpm found in directory:
     /mirror/ftp.opensuse.org/factory-tested/repo/oss/suse/x86_64

 February 14th, 2013 / 1:40am  Ok, we have a fairly good System setup -but- the sound is still not working correctly -and- we can not do our WebPages locally. Well, httpd.conf and mod_userdir.conf look ok. Let's see what is running... apparently apache2 is NOT... according to the Simple Half of the RunLevels -but- is in the Expert Mode. We 'Enabled' it earlier in the System RunLevels. Will try again. Oh darn!! Forgot to link from our home public_html dir to the developement dir. Alllllrighty now. Putting in that link got our Local WebPages working again.

Now for our sound... pavucontrol and pulseaudio... no help. Pulseaudio was already installed. Installing pavucontrol did nothing. What is happening is; my regular user has initially "Dummy Output" selected in the Audio Setup with "Built-in Audio Analog Stereo" greyed out and NOT selectable. IF I switch to user 'root' the devices get swapped. Then when I go back to regular user the proper one is selected and the "Dummy Output" is greyed out. Things work fine 'until' we re-boot.

 Audio Fix - February 14th, 2013 / 8:55am   Seem to remember something about joining the 'audio' group. (We asked the Lord during our dog walk this morning for help -and- He did.) We'll try that. OK!! We added the group "audio" to our groups and we now have sound on boot-up. Shouldn't really be like that -but- maybe they will get it fixed in the next release.
They did... sound worked right off on RC2.

 nVidia Video Driver - Feb 15th, 6:39am  We have been using the nouveau Driver successfully for the most part -but- it is still not quite as smooth as the Native Driver. Course so far, the nouveau Driver hasn't frozen up on us either. -But- we are gona try the nVidia Native. You don't know till you try -and- might as well do it now whilst we are really still testing.
Well, that idea got quickly thrown out. Can NOT get a Command Line Login!!

 March 5th, 2013 / 8:32am   Jump down to the nVidia Section for further info.

Alllllrighty now... my friends, we have a Beta, first version. The download went smooth and slow -but- not to slow. Shortly we will create our DVD. Due to some previous encounters and some implications -and- complaints on the forum, we are gona do a FULL install. No Updates! Those don't seem to work well during the developement stages. Some may strongly disagree -but- to each his or her own. Minor updates to a released version are a little better but even those can be a problem. Nope. We do not like updates... most of the time.

 January 17th, 2012 / 10:13am  Ok. The DVD has been successfully created, however (one of those again), the MD5 checksum was in error... again. On both the Main Disc and the Addons Disc. We complained and are still waiting. Decided to create the disc anyway and it was without errors in creation. Now we will have to see how it is in 'use'. Just created the DVD. Not gona try it... yet.

 UPDATE - January 27, 2013 / 8:47am  Well, we once again used our perogative... and changed our mind. Couldn't wait. The next release is still 2 weeks away and there are some things we would like to know. So, we tried a 'new trick'. Went into YaST2 Software Management and did the
    "All in this list - Update IF newer available."
Took some time -but- evidently so would any other way. Almost the whole system was updated!!

OS Information
  OS:            Linux 3.6.3-1-desktop x86_64
  Current user:  ctaylor@dusty-tr2.TRComputing
  System:        openSUSE 12.3 Beta 1 (x86_64)
  KDE:           4.9.97

Display Info
  Vendor:     nVidia Corporation
  Model:      GeForce 7300 LE
  2D driver:  nouveau
  3D driver:  nouveau Gallium (9.0.1)

The above info was obtained AFTER the "Update", which, by the by, went smoothly and very well. Welllll... the time was off again. It, my Update, changed the adjtime file from LOCAL to UTC.

 xinitrc - 9:11am  Yeah... we are still on this one. It is better -BUT- not there yet. The Terminal Windows are the correct size and correctly positioned Horizontally -but- NOT vertically. Once again they are plastered at the top. Reported it as a Bug this time:
Bug 796360 - xinitrc terminal startup locations

 February 6th, 2013 /pm  This afternoon we had our first inopportune "crash" with this 'new' system. As mentioned elsewhere, we were/are having difficulties with our video card. It appears that nVidia can not, -or- will not, fix the problems that we -and- others are experiencing. The screen will occasionaly freeze. Only out, -or- correction, is to Power Off. So, when we installed this latest version of openSuSE, and tried using nouveau, we were pleasantly surprized. It worked a lot smoother and we did not get any complaints from VMware. And as we used it we did not get any screen freezes. However, today we got a crash with a NULL pointer. We were doing our usual, VMware, Win2K, Homesite and multiple Firefox windows and it crashed when we tried to bring one to the top. The small DownLoad window to be exact. The screen blackened and then we got our text screen of the boot-up showing with all the stuff that had happened -plus- lines at the bottom complaining about a Null Pointer. Only out was a Power Off... and full disgust and off to pout!!

We are back and using the 'new' system again. Tomorrow we are to get the first RC version which we will install and test. Not sure where to look concerning our crash -but- perhaps we can get some assistance from the forum.

As mentioned elsewhere, we didn't even bring down M0 and even though we brought down M1, we didn't do anything with it. The MD5SUM was bad -and- even though we were told we could ignore it... we didn't. If it wasn't important enough to fix the MD5 then it wasn't important enough to test it. We monitored the logs -and- people were having some difficulties. -But- as also mentioned elsewhere, we are "discovering" our new Smartphone and it is taking most of our "spare" time. It is an Android phone - which is Linux based, so it fits right in... sorta.

Anyway, this is probably all that will be said about the first two Milestones.

Ok. We brought this down, installed it and screwed up our System!! We have a three partition set up. Windows Media Center, openSuSE 12.2 and openSuSE 12.3. Well, the third one is supposed to be for 12.3. It was still setup as 12.2 from our 12.2 testing days. Anywho, we tried to do a "zypper dup" from our DVD copy. After we got the commands straight to do it from the drive, we fired it off. When it finished, it had over written our MBR.!! So, right off the bat we are NOT happy. Had to use SuperGrub2 to get ourselves straightened out. Try it, you'll like it.

That is what brought us here today. We installed M2, as mentioned above, using zypper and then had to repair our system. Matter of fact we don't know IF it is fixed our not.?. We used SuperGrub2 in order to get back into our openSuSE 12.2 Main System, which is where we are at the moment... -and- then went into YaST2 to reset the MBR. We are sure that we are gona have to fix the 12.2 Grub2 cause it will be pointing to the correct location -but- the wrong name. It will think that it is a 12.2... but it is now a 12.3. Had the same kind of thing with the former Grub and it was an easy fix. Just had to edit the Menu.lst file. This will test our knowledge of James McDaniel's scripts. James Blog Info. -But- first we'll see if we can re-boot into the 'proper' System.

 Added 3:00pm  Nope. We didn't fix it... -but- we looked into the openSuSE forum and possibly found the answer... from caf4926

 # grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
Generating grub.cfg ...
Found theme: /boot/grub2/themes/openSUSE/theme.txt
Found background: /boot/grub2/themes/openSUSE/background.png
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.4.11-2.16-desktop
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd-3.4.11-2.16-desktop
  /dev/sdc: open failed: No medium found
  /dev/sdd: open failed: No medium found
  /dev/sde: open failed: No medium found
  /dev/sdf: open failed: No medium found
  No volume groups found
Found Windows XP Media Center Edition on /dev/sda1
Found Windows NT/2000/XP on /dev/sda2
Found openSUSE 12.3 Milestone 2 (x86_64) on /dev/sda9
done

 Added 3:17pm  Nope. Didn't fix it. -But- further reading in the caf discussions we found this:

 # grub2-install /dev/sda
Installation finished. No error reported.

 Added 4:03pm  Well this is unusual. As mentioned above, we "updated" a 12.2 version to 12.3 and to our surprize VMware is working!! nVidia didn't carry over cause we got that "Direct Rendering" message again -and- our display is shifted to the Left by about a 1/4 inch. However, as we experienced once before, the nouveau driver works better when it gets loaded by an Update -after- nVidia has been installed. We'll see IF the nVidia driver that we have will work with this verson of openSuSE.

Initially, we have the following System setup:

OS Information
  OS:            Linux 3.6.3-1-desktop x86_64
  Current user:  ctaylor@dusty-tr2.TRComputing
  System:        openSUSE 12.3 Milestone 2 (x86_64)
  KDE:           4.9.90
Display Info
  Vendor:     nVidia Corporation
  Model:      GeForce 7300 LE
  2D driver:  nv
  3D driver:  Unknown Gallium (9.0)

 Added 5:24pm  Ok now. we have the nVidia driver installed.

Display Info
  Vendor:     nVidia Corporation
  Model:      GeForce 7300 LE
  2D driver:  nvidia
  3D driver:  NVIDIA 304.64

 The Time  -Annnddd- the time is wrong. Don't know what was done in these last couple of openSuSE versions -but- they don't set the time correctly on the initial install.

Ok. We checked and the 'adjtime' file was there -but- it had 'UTC' on the last line instead of 'LOCAL'. We changed it but the time is still wrong. We will do our usual and re-boot to see what happens.
Ok. After re-boot we have the correct time.

 December 31, 2012 /5:05am -- October 15th, 2013/8:02am  ReInstall: Ok. We were not happy with the operations. Mainly the networking. Because of the "scrambled" initial setup we are going to give it another try. This time from a "DVD Full Install". No Updating. Never had good luck with those most of the time anyways.
Note: This is also after our MotherBoard, PSU and Video card Replacement.

1. Preps - Downloaded iso and Burned DVD
2. Created a 12.3 dir on the L: drive and saved the personal configs for both us and root
3. Re-Boot with DVD - License is correct - for 12.3
   Language and Keyboard both for English, USA. Mouse and GUI work.
4. System Probe - Analyzing 'Puter... seems satisfied.
5. Install Mode - New. Auto Config - NO!!
6. Time Zone - Time and Date correct. Set it for Phoenix, AZ USA
   Did NOT set it for UTC. In the installation settings it claimed that our Hardware Clock was set for Local time.
   OK, the correct adjtime file info was NOT installed. It has UTC instead of LOCAL at the end.
7. Desktop Selection - KDE Desktop which is the default.
8. Suggested Partitioning - We edit the Partition Setup. Have 2 Hard Disks. We leave the "Proposed" setup checked -but- we then modify that. Have to, it always wants to overwrite our Main System.
9. Create New User. Do NOT use as admin. - NO Auto Login.
10. Set root password.
11. Installation Settings.
      Booting -> Boot Loader Options
     We 'Un-checked' both Set Active and Write the MBR.
    Grub2 Info
12. Software -> Details -> Make our selections
    See PR above...
13. Firewall & SSH - Disable. Messes with our VMware.
14. Install.... and first reboot.
15. Oh WOW. Got some new screens that look gorgeous.
    As it turns out, these "New" screens are from Grub2.
    -BUT- Unfortunately, these were the "Previous" settings. Can properly get to our 12.2 version but can not get to the "new" 12.3 version. Why?? Cause even though the disk locations match, the names don't. So we are gona have to go into 12.2, edit its Grub2 and then re-boot. We performed another:
        # grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
    and then another:
        # grub2-install /dev/sda
    and then a re-boot.
    NOPE!! It didn't work. We should spend more time in figuring out this delima -but- we just don't feel like it. We know that we can repair it AFTER it writes to the MBR so we are gona just re-install it and let it. Actually... we are gona waste some time. There was questions in our mind about whether or not to set the active flag. We are gona try it -but- not write the MBR. May have to do this re-install one more time -but- at least we will know a little more. Oh, one more thing, the "Boot Loader Location", we left the "Boot from Extended Partition" checked.
    NOPE!! It didn't work. We don't like this new Grub2 learning curve. Re-install again and take the defaults and fix things afterwards... using SuperGrub.
16. Hostname and Domain - dusty-tr2 / TRComputing
    NO to change hostname via DHCP
17. Network Config - Everything looks good ... use it.
18. Test Internet connection - said Success.
19. Loading the Package Manager
20. Online update - Do it... accept patches.
21.  Oct 19, 2012 / 4:46pm  We were doing our "Re-Load" and it crashed - locked up - required a Power Off Reset!! - after this step. Picked up at the following step after the Re-Boot.
22. Hardware config - Do it
    alevt and nxtvepg were installed for the TV card.
23. FINISH!! And claims to be good!!
24. First Login - OK! - Remove DVD
25. Re-Booted and could get to New System... once again.
26. Right off -first thing- opened a terminal, signed on as root and did a 'zypper up'. Even though we obtained a 'ton' of updates just before our latest install, there were none this time. They were all obtained at the end of this install. -But- we checked anyway.
    The second thing we did was set the time correctly. /etc/adjtime was missing... again.
    The third thing was to install the nVidia drivers.
27. Copied inxi into /usr/bin
    This can be a very handy command. It will tell you all about your computer. Things you need to know. A copy may be obtained at: inxi options
    Thanks 'oldcpu' for telling us about it.
    As it turns out... there is a copy installed "with" the System in /usr/bin/X11.
    Welllll... not really, leastwise not in the M2 release. So we copied our saved version into /usr/bin.
28. Alllllrighty Now. We have an installation -but- it is Master of the MBR and not our Main 12.2 System. The default at bootup is to go to the 12.3 System. We can either live with that or try to correct it like we did before. Think we are gona do the later.
    Ok. We went into 12.2 and did the double Grub2 commands and then re-booted.
    The system came up with 12.2, our Main System, as the default.
    Re-boot again and we were able to select and obtain version 12.3.
29. Note: An interesting occurance when we "reset" our system with the double Grub2 commands from within 12.2 AFTER it was setup by 12.3 When we re-boot into 12.3 we get 'dusty-tr2.TRComputing' at the top of the login. When it was 'originally' setup by the 12.3 install, all it had was just the 'dusty-tr2'... like our 12.2 system has... hmmmmmm.?. Also has 'Users' over the user selection box... whereas orignally it had nothing, just like our 12.2 version. Interesting... velly interesting...

 Added 10:01am  Did not get Logon Song at boot-up. However, the nouveau Drivers seem to be a lot better... lots.
January 1st, 2013 / 9:54am -- Hey the time is correct -and- we did not have to fix it!!

 January 8th, 2013 / 9:10am   HOME-LINUX:/usr/share/sounds # cd freedesktop/stereo/
HOME-LINUX:/usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo # ln -s service-login.oga desktop-login.oga
However: KDE from version 4.6 and upwards depends on libcanberra for Pulseaudio Speaker Setup Page.

 January 12th, 2013 / 10:31am We could get audio as 'root' -but- NOT as a Regular User. To fix this we had to delete our card from the setup and then re-install it.
Per: SDB:Audio troubleshooting

At this time... refer  openSuSE 12.2 Networking  .

 Analysis - January 1st, 2013/ 9:55am  As mentioned above, we brought down Milestone 2 and tried 'just upgrading'. It was NOT good. So, we have performed a FULL DVD re-install of M2 and are now setting up the Networking.

1. Into YaST2 and check the Services.
2. smb and nmb are NOT running. We went into YaST2 and found that the selection of RunLevels is NOT there. Only selection is B for Boot. No other runlevels are offered!!
3. STOP! Things have changed. We don't have RunLevels anymore!! Just make sure that the proper services are enabled. Refer: RunLevels
4. Just use the "Simple Mode" and enable the ones you need.

 January 11th, 2013 / 9:30am  Ok. If you used the above reference and jumped down to read about those adventures you would see that things have changed. It appears that we don't really worry about -or- do much with RunLevels. Leastwise, not at the higher levels. They have taken away our RunLevel Editing.
It's back in RC1.

Anywho, we enabled smb and nmb and they are running. We edited the http.conf and the smb.conf to get our Local Network working. At least between the 'drives' here on our Main System. Still need to get the Laptop networked in.

 Broke! - February 19th, 2013 / 10:26am  Hate it when this happens. Get it working -and- then it don't... later.

 March 18th, 2013 / 1:09am  Ok now, we must have our permissions set correctly cause... we are now accessing our WebPages on the Laptop via Homesite from within Win2K from within VMware from within openSuSE 12.3 in our Test Area. -And- we are looking at the changes made via Firefox on the Laptop.

		             Monitor 
		  Vendor: SNY, Model: SONY SDM-HS95P
		  Num hsync: 1, Num vsync: 1
		  hsync range 0:  30.00 -  81.00
		  vsync range 0:  43.00 -  75.00

The following Graphics Card info has changed and we don't remember how we got it in the first place!! When we do we'll change it. Well, there are some things we can change...

		          Graphics Card 
		  Model: "nVidia GeForce 7300 LE GTX 560"
		  Vendor: pci 0x10de "nVidia Corporation"
		  Device: pci 0x01d1 "GeForce 7300 LE"
		  SubVendor: pci 0x1043 "ASUSTeK Computer Inc."
		  SubDevice: pci 0x0346
		  Revision: 0xa1
		  Driver: "nouveau"
		  Driver Modules: "drm"
		  
		  0x02e0	NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT
		  0x0614	NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT
		  0x1201	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560
		  0x0a23	nvidia geforce 210

 March 18th, 2014 / 5:56am  This paragraph is actually concerned with openSuSE 13.1 and above. Why is it here?? Because. Really, cause I reference this area from the other page(s). Grammatically, these sentences may not make sense cause of everything running together -but- I want it all in one spot. What? The info provided by a reader of my WebPages by the name of, Chuck Huber, of Duke Pro, Inc. He pointed out that a newer, at this time and date, nVidia Driver may help our display problems. Because of various personal reasons I can not check out his findings at this time. How-some-ever, IF you are interested, the driver can be found at: Nvidia 304.121 We have conversed and he says that he has had no "LockUps" for the past three days.

 October 16th, 2013 / 7:06am  Surely this is 'easier' than it has turned out to be. This Video situation has become a NightMare!!   Note from SDB:Configuring graphics cards :

The SDB reference mentioned above also has some other good info in it.

 October 18th, 2013 / 8:33am  We are gona try "The Last Resort"... read and follow the directions. In this openSuSE Release they have, like always, included drivers for nVidia cards. Don't know why -but- they are usuay not the latest. We usually will get the latest and install them ourselves. However, that doesn't seem to be working properly this time. -OR- the Software has exceeded our System capabilities. We at one time were able to do things -that we shouldn't have been able to do- and now that we supposedly have the "correct" hardware... it ain't workin'!!

So what directions are we talking about?? It has been said, by nVidia themselves, that you should use what 'SuSE' provides. Well, they have a way through YAST2 of installing the nVidia Drivers. That is what we are going to try now. ... 8:59am it is installed ... now we Re-Boot.
  1. Ok, we got the Grub2 Screen.
  2. Ok, it is showing the Lizard on the Vine.
  3. Ok, we got the Login screen.
  4. Ok, we got the KDE icons showing.
  5. Huray!! We have a Desktop!!
  6. ARRRGGG!!! Joy is short lived. nVidia Drivers failed to load. Probably cause they
    didn't do what they should have with the 'nomodeset' values. We'll check those now.
  7. Nope!! The 'cure/fix' was to install the nVidia Driver that we obtained for their site.
    Well, we shouldn't have said 'fix' cause we haven't tried our VMware 8 yet.

 January 2013  Well, it is late -but- better late than never. The nVidia/nouveau Drivers have been discussed elsewhere -but- we always have an nVidia section and this may be our last. It appears, from what we have been reading at various places on the Web, that nVidia may be stopping support for our board... the GeForce 7 Series. Not definite yet ... -but- things are not looking good. However, the boys have been working hard on the nouveau Driver -and- this latest one is the best. Sooooo... we may be switching.

 Injection May 7th, 2013 / 7:36pm As noted elsewhere, we had 'another' HDD failure which 'after' purchasing another drive, a 750GB one, we found that it was NOT the drive -but- the SATA ICH7 Controller. -But- that is another story. What it does bring out is... we made drastic changes to our System ... again. We made the 'new' 750GB HDD the Main Drive so that we would have more room for more Virtual Machines. So, we are back at the installation of the nVidia driver. There are some things that we read up on before and as we are rebuilding our System. Hopefully, these updates will cure our random lock-ups, cause the nouveau driver is just NOT as smooth as the nVidia one. They are getting better -but- not there yet.

One of the things we did was to 'read' the release notes. Funny thing about those, they have some 'important' information. One of the items was that users of the Proprietary nVidia Drivers have to be added to the video Group.
    usermod -a -G video $USER
where $USER is replaced with the actual user name.

• nvidia-computeG02
• nvidia-gfxG02-kmp-desktop
• X11-video-nvidiaG02
• libdrm_nouveau2
• libdrm_nouveau2-32bit
• xf86-video-nv
• xorg-x11-driver-video-nouveau
• libvdpau1
• kipi-plugins-lang
• libkgeomap-lang

 March 5th, 2013 / 9:29am  Even though the nouveau Driver is getting better ... we are still gona try to use the Native nVidia Driver. Hopefully, the latest kernel release will allow this. -But- first gota mow the lawn.

 11:11am  Ah ha!! Four Aces. Maybe that is a good sign. Anywho, also with this latest RC2 install, we can get to our Command Line. So, we are gona try to install the nVidia Driver. The following was grabbed from our NewSuSE-11-1 file and it applies to this version.

-But- (that word again) we thinks that there are some preliminary operations -before- implementing the nVidia Driver. We do NOT want to totally remove the nouveau Driver -but- we must disable it. Can't have two. -And- since the nVidia Driver is NOT available via YaST2... yet, we will have to do it the "Hard Way".

 October 15th, 2013 / 12:31pm   Ok now, possibly our video problems are solved. As mentioned already, we had to replace our MotherBoard and at the same time we replaced the video card. We did some research and the boards that we were using we 'NOT' powerful enough for what we were trying to do. In fact, it is a miracle that they worked at all!! Now we have this PNY nVidia GTX 560 that is supposed to do the job. We'll see.

• CTRL-ALT-F1
• Sign on as 'root'.
• init 3
• Disable Kernel Mode Setting by editing /etc/sysconfig/kernel and changing NO_KMS_IN_INITRD from "no" to "yes".
• Do a "mkinitrd"
• Reboot "shutdown -r now"
• At the 'boot' we must enter 'nomodeset 3' in the Boot Options. IF you used legacy Grub boot, just move down to the Boot Options line and enter it. IF you used Grub2 then you will have to press 'e' at the hi-lighted boot line and then using the Arrow Keys move down to the line that starts with 'linux'. Hit the end key and then enter a space and 'nomodeset 3'. In all cases minus the quotes.
• Continue the boot process, 'Enter Key' for legacy and 'F10' for Grub2. Wait for a Konsole to open. Sign on as 'root'.
• Change to the dir with nVidia Driver in it.
•  
• Now jump to the GTX 560 setup...
•  
• nVidia driver 304.60 and 64 needs this... 304.84 does not. Jump to 304.84 / 304.88 step.
  ===========================
  This driver needs to be patched for kernel 3.7. Download the nVidia driver and the patch file, then run the commands: (after signing on to 'root' IF not there already)
  
  sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-304.60.run --apply-patch patch_nvidia_304_60.run_for_3.7
  sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-304.60-custom.run
  
  Change the names for 32-bit systems.
  
  The above fix is courtesy of:
      Larry Finger @ http://www.lwfinger.com/nvidia_patches/
  Next Step
  ========================
  
• 304.84 / 304.88 step
      sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-304.84.run -aq
  
  Wellll... we got another... 304.88 on April 5, 2013 / 9:09am
      sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-304.88.run -aq
  
  and we 'fixed' all the 'nomodesets' that we had unfixed in our latest attempts to go back to nouveau. We are once again 'going back' to nVidia... one more time.
  ========================
  
•  
• GTX 560 SetUp
      sh ./NVIDA-Linux-x86_64-319.60.run -aq
•  
• Next Step
  modprobe nvidia
• nouveau will be blacklisted by nVidia in /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf
• init 5 && exit ... (that is ALL on the same line)
• You will be taken back to the LogOn Screen. LogOn and test and enjoy.
•  March 17th, 2013 / 2:03pm   And naturally we have some changes, primarily cause of what we have experienced and hopefully learned. 'nomodeset' IS needed. So we will edit /etc/default/grub and add nomodeset to the kernel parameter options, e.g.

  GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="nomodeset"
  

  Then run, as root;
  

   # grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
  

  Followed by:
  

   # grub2-install /dev/sda  (replace 'sda', if neccessary, with your boot drive)
  

  After this 'fix' you may -or- may not want to ReBoot to test it. We would recomend testing it now.
  Jump to nomodeset fixed
• ReBooted to see IF it will run 'without' nomodeset. (Well, it won't. See below.)
• OK. It boots up, we get the LogOn sound and we are in business.
• That is all -and- it works... so far. Now have to see IF we get those screen Freezes.
• Well,all is NOT well. "Direct rendering is not available." So, something did not get setup correctly.
• Annnddd... CTRL-ALT-F1 did NOT work. Got a black screen and only a Power Off would get out of it.
  Welllll..., with the 'nomodeset' fix we can CTRL-ALT-F1 and get the black screen -but- we can CTRL-ALT-F7 and get back to our normal desktop. Still need to find out WHY the Virtual Screens are black... later. It is happening with this 'new' 304.84 nVidia Driver on BOTH openSuSE versions.
• Need 'nomodeset' so nVidia will get Direct Rendering. This is placed in the grub.cfg file at the end of the 'linux' line.
  Unfortunately, all of the above is NOT true. The 'final' fix for the Direct Rendering is a simple Group assignment. We need to make our 'user' a member of the 'video' group. Think that was needed for something else too. Nope. That was for the sound problem and we had to be a member of the 'audio' group. This last info courtesy of: opensuse-bugs.
• nomodeset fixed
  October 15th, 2013 / 1:23pm have new MB and Video card installed and CTRL-ALT-F1 -and- CTRL-ALT-F7 both work.
  At this point you should have a "Working" openSuSE 12.3 System with
  VMware 8 -and- the latest nVidia Driver.

OK Now. We have been experiencing these 'problems' way to long. This little blurb is placed between nVidia and nouveau -because- that is what it is about. They have 'both' caused us headaches. The former cause of 'LockUps' and the later cause of 'performance'. Our GPU is an nVidia GeForce 7300 on a card that has an LE tagged onto the end of it. The GeForce 7300 LE GPU is, or was, a mainstream product. It is positioned above the GeForce 6200 GPUs, and below the GeForce 7600 GPUs.

 October 16th, 2013 / 4:43am  Alllllrighty now, to cut to the chase, we got a 'new' Video Card. An nVidia GeForce GTX 560. We finally pulled our head out and properly researched this problem. EVEN THOUGH IT WORKED... or appeared to... the little nVidia Geforce 7300 LE video card was NOT strong enough to handle the stuff we were throwing at it. A plus for HP and nVidia, something that really shouldn't have worked did... or almost did.

 nVidia   As mentioned above -and many other places!- this one has caused us 'LockUps'. The screen would just freeze and there was -NO WAY- to get it going again 'except' for a PowerOff! -And- naturally this would always happen right when we were in the 'middle' of something important! 'Most' of time we would be in Homesite inside Win2k inside VMware which would be inside our current version of openSuSE.

 October 3rd, 2013/2:34am  In researching our System Lockup problem we found the following:

NVRM: bad caching on address 0x1cdf000: actual 0x46 != expected 0x73

 The "In Between"  The GeForce 7300 LE features PureVideo technology. This technology came about with the GeForce 6 and 7 Series GPUs. We are mentioning it here -because- we believe that this "New Technology" is responsible for most, if not 'ALL', of our problems. As can be seen by the dates in This Table and these openSuSE Releases, the problems are somewhat co-ordinated with the openSuSE 11.x series and up. We have been complaining about the Releases ever since they started Version 11. Now this VDPAU (Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix), which is part of this PureVideo, seems to have gotten more and more into the Drivers at about the same time.

So, what have we done about it?? Well, over all these years, we primarily waited for nVidia, or openSuSE, to come out with a version that worked. Did we investigate?? No. -But- we are now. The thing that triggered it was; a list of 'UpDates' in this latest version of openSuSE, Version 12.3. One of the items in it was/is 'libvdpau'. This is an open source library and API originally designed by nVidia for its GeForce 8 series and later GPU hardware. Well, we have a GeForce 7 series card.

Now then, one of nVidia's claims to fame is that they have one Driver Download that 'works' on all of their cards, or GPU's. Well, maybe not 'all' -but- a gigantic list. For example, just take a look at the 'Supported Products' that are listed for the Driver that 'works' on our card... nVidia Driver. It is 'nice' that 'one' Driver will support 'all' of those Products -but- you've got to keep them straight -and- separate. There 'has' to be conditional statements in the code that specify 'which' product is to use that section. -And- IF something doesn't get coded correctly ... wham! We have code for the wrong GPU trying to work. It could even be a parameter count of some timing, a to large or to small, of a number. Works on one, -but- not on the other(s).

Then we have the openSuSE code that must also co-ordinate these Video Operations. Once again we have something that is supposed to work across numerous Products... our PC's. Now the 'open source' library that was 'originally' designed by nVidia we believe, for our opneSuSE System, is maintained by openSuSE. IT was in our 'latest' UpDates -and- is what brought all this on. We actually started investigating!!

Now to the 'Reason' for the 'In Between' title. Just -before- we got the latest 'Updates' we had decided that we were gona Switch Back to the 'nouveau' Driver. This, as relayed in the referenced Switch Back, 'should' have been nothing more than a 'reversal' of the procedures to enable the nVidia Driver. However... we had read in some conversations in the 'Forums' that we 'might' not have to UnInstall the nVidia Driver. What we did:
vi /etc/default/grub -- Add -or- Remove 'nomodeset' and 'nouveau.noaccel=1' to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT command line parameters
*** 8 Apr 13 / 8:39pm --- only have 'nomodeset'
vi /etc/sysconfig/kernel -- Put NO_KMS_IN_INITRD to 'yes' -or- 'no'
mkinitrd -- After the kernel change
*** 8 Apr 13 / 8:39pm --- have it set to 'yes'
Execute the next two to get the 'boot' defaults set.
/usr/sbin/grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
grub2-install /dev/sda
*** 8 Apr 13 / 8:39pm --- Done!
cd /etc/modprobe.d/ -- blacklisted -or- UN-blacklisted 'nouveau'
*** 8 Apr 13 / 8:39pm --- We found the following file 'After' we had messed around with the prvious one -and- tried to use the 'nouveau' Driver. So, it was installed in all this mess.
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-304.88.run -aq
*** 8 Apr 13 / 8:39pm --- Well, this is interesting. We don't have 'nouveau' -or- 'nVidia' blacklisted anywhere. Nor do we have an nvidia.conf file!!
modprobe nvidia --- just for good measure.

 nouveau   Now the good guys, and gals, who are producing this, are 'ALL' doing it on their own time -and- they are giving it away. It is being released 'as' it is being developed. They are not a multi-million dollar company and therefore do not have access to 'all' of the Video Cards that this is supposed to work on. Even though they are all nVidia cards, they are still 'all' different. The main difference is the GPU's.

 STATUS April 8th, 2013 / 9:24pm It is working. We did most of the editing in this section on the 'Desktop' with NO Freezes. -And- we have had the machine running continuously for a couple of days. Granted 'most' of the time was idle -but- it was still up. Now we are going to seriously try to use it.

 October 15th, 2013 / 2:28pm  Well, we were lucky that it worked at all!! The video cards were NOT strong enough for what we were doing. We finally got another that will --- or it is supposed to --- fit the bill.

 November 22, 2013/9:42am  On the 'above' date, the card was installed. Due to apparent VMware problems -and- our many, many failures to get openSuSE 13.1 installed, we are late in making this entry. We have had 'to many' installs and un-installs over the past couple of months. Final fixes??? Disable the nmi_watchdog interrupt -and- DO NOT install openSuSE 13.1.
Now then, as a reprieve to 13.1, we got it working on our 'New Machine'

Now then, the interesting part of all this..?.. During our last install of this version, openSuSE 12.3, the nVidia Drivers for our new card were installed -and- used!! This is the first time that has happened. It is not the latest version of the drivers -but- the nVidia GTX 560 was detected and the proper drivers installed. WE will 'update' them later. Will use the tips from 'James' on the forum.

Comments...

Ok now, once again we have a Video card replacement. We had tried this card before -but- we had the same 'LockUp' problem that we had with our nVidia 7300LE. Then we had a complete failure of the card ... or so it seemed ... and we took it out and put the 7300LE back in. Well, as time went on, our System Problems manifested. Suffice it to say we had to replace the MotherBoard. At the same time, on a whim, we decided to try to use the nVidia 7300GT again. This board was removed from our wife's machine and replaced with an nVidia 9800GT. Her gamming was/is getting very intense and the video card was not quite good enough. Since, we seemed to be exceeding our video resources was when we decided to get her the newer more powerful card and then we could use hers. Well, she was happy and... now we are too.

Another good thing, or we hope it is, the nVidia Driver will be the same, cause both the old and the new cards in our system are from the GeForece 7 Series.

... more info to come.

 October 15th, 2013 / 2:32pm  OK, the more info is, we got an nVidia GeForce GTX 560 card to perform our video operations.

Comments...

Well, we finally did it. Got a new Video Card. Been fighting this to long. The rating of the card is still not as high as the one in our wife's machine -but- we aren't gamming either. Just want a card that will not cause a 'Feeze Up' and will work good in our system. The new card is rated higher, in the charts, than our previous 7300 LE -but- less that the 7600 GT. The nity-grity details can be found in:
    HP m7480n with GeForce 210     <-- the fix

Now then, we purchased the card a couple of days ago on Thursday. Took us some time to get around to this section of the Docs. Mainly cause we had problems at first. Yep. Brand new and problems already. What were they?? Sound. Sound cause of a Video Card?? Yep. This one has an HDMI output and that incorporates sound, HDMI sound. Conflicts arose! Please refer to the reference above for the 'fix'.

 April 14th, 2013   Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix-like systems (VDPAU) on most GeForce 8 series... and newer. -And this- is what we think caused 'ALL' of our problems. Yes, our card was/is a GeForce 7 series -but- this, the VDPAU, was/is the open source API for UNIX and all its relatives. -And- nVidia 'combines' a lot of its cards in one driver. We believe that a 'mistake' was made and never corrected. Attempts were made -or- other changes affected the 'problem' cause there were changes -but- the end result was a System Freeze -just when you 'really' didn't want it to. Always, always when you were doing something 'critical'. -Or- at least it was to us!!

 April 16th, 2013 / 8:24pm As you can see by the dates and times ... we get interrupted -- constantly!! This paragraph was actually first composed on the 14th -but- we are adding to it today. Continuing... Now we need to 'exercise' the card and make sure that we don't get anymore of those "Freeze Ups". The previous card worked with the 'nouveau' Driver and NO Freeze Ups -but- it was NOT as smooth and clean as with the Native nVidia Driver. We have not even tried nouveau with this card... yet. We just installed the code from nVidia:

Why did we include Windows Info here in a Primarily Linux Info Page???   -because-   Really, because the machine was 'originally' a Windows maching -and- almost everything is Windows oriented... by default, we set that side up first and it is also where we learned of, and trouble shot, our 'Sound' problem. I mean, you go to the path of least resistance... right??

 April 17th, 2013   We had another Freeze. Returned the Card.

Alllllrighty now!! We are having difficulties with our nVidia Driver. Been experiencing this for a long time. Now when we first installed this openSuSE 12.3, it by default used the nouveau Driver. We tried it for a while -but- it didn't quite meet our needs. -Or- we should say we just weren't happy with the non-smooth operations. However, it DID NOT 'Freeze Up' on us like the nVidia Drivers have... almost continuously since openSuSE 12.1. In the beginning it was just a 'pause'... a long one. Now it just Freezes the whole system -and- the only out is a 'Power Off' ReSet. We don't have a ReSet button on this machine. Have been entertaining the idea of installing one ourselves -but- never really think about it till there is a 'problem'. Anyway that is another story.

What we 'plan' to do now is switch back to nouveau. However, we tried that over in our openSuSE 12.2 version and were NOT successful. Hopefully, this round will go better. It SHOULDN'T be more than reversing the steps to go 'from' nouveau 'to' nVidia.

1. Enter 'root'
2. cd /etc/modeprobe.d/
3. Edit nvidia.conf and comment out the black listing of nouveau
4. Check 50-blacklist.conf and make sure nouveau is NOT in there.
5. Edit /etc/sysconfig/kernel and change the 'yes' back to 'no'.
       NO_KMS_IN_INITRD=
6. Edit /etc/default/grub and remove the nomodeset for the 'normal' BootUp
       GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=
7. Execute:
       /usr/sbin/grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
8. Execute:
       grub2-install /dev/sda
9. Execute:
       mkinitrd
10. maybe??? - Add kernel boot parameter:
        nouveau.noaccel=1
11. Restarted the System and added the above to the 'linux' line in grub2.

Now then, according to some 'jibing' on the Web, we can do the above and NOT have to 'UnInstall' our nVidia Native Drivers. Course that was in a conversation concerning openSuSE 11.3. Anyway, we did the above including the nouveau.noaccel=1 on the grub2 command line using the 'e' at boot-up and are now running the system. inxi reports the nVidia 304.84 in use and not the nouveau Driver. We may have to do the 'UnInstall' of the nVidia Driver -but- for now we are leaving it as it is and testing. Heck, nothing else has worked!!

 April 5th, 2013 / 8:45am  Welllll... that didn' work either. We had another system Freeze -and- in the middle of something important... again!! So, we looked and found that they, 'nVidia', have produced 'another' Driver... 304.88 Released on April 2nd, 2013.
In addition to that we have something like 55 UpDates for the System!! One of them is; libvdpau1 - which... is involved with the nVidia Software. Now it is NOT supposed to affect our GeForce 7 Series card -but- it used to. In fact it started getting serious at GeForce 6 Series. We are going to install these UpDates and hope that they do NOT crash our System like before.
Allllrighty now. We made it so far. The software installed and the System is still working. However, we haven't ReStarted... yet. Nor have we tried VMware 8 ... yet. So, here goes, ReStart First.    OK! We got ReStarted and the System came up fine, as far as we can tell at this point. Now for VMware Allllllrighty... VMware came up with NO complaints and it even looked like it was FASTER. Ok, not doing anything in VMware at this time. We exited and want to 'make the rounds' and check ALL the places that get changed for a Video Driver change to make sure they are ALL correct.
Refer: nVidia Section

'Most' of our troubles have been experienced whilst having VMware up and running with Win2K. We like Homesite and are having a hard time finding a replacement. -But- then, even our other choice, TopStyle, requires Windows. We may have to 'forget' all of our Windows Toys and switch over to using 'Quanta'. -But- then that would kill/loose all our fun and 'showing off' our running Windows inside Linux.

Mime Type Icons can be found at: [/usr/share/icons]
Login User Icons:                [/usr/share/kde4/apps/kdm/pics/users]
KDE4 sysinfo "My Computer" at:	 [/usr/share/kde4/apps/sysinfo/about/images]
Desktop menu entry files at:     [/usr/share/applications]
application's icon:              [/usr/share/pixmaps]
directory of C header files:     [/lib/modules/2.6.22.5-31-bigsmp/build/include]
list of TV stations:             [/etc/X11/xawtvrc]
Wallpapers:                      [/usr/share/wallpapers]

/usr/bin/vmware

Emoticons at:                    [/opt/kde3/share/emoticons/Default]

Karamba & Sensors at:        [/opt/kde3/share/applnk/Utilities]
Karamba Themes at:               [/home/ctaylor/.kde/share/apps/superkaramba/themes]
=======================================================================================
In /etc/bash.bashrc:
  This will make the prompt char on the next line.
  In this first part we add the item in Red.
	# Other prompting for root
	if test "$UID" -eq 0  ; then
	    if test -n "$TERM" -a -t ; then
	    	_bred="$(path tput bold 2> /dev/null; path tput setaf 1 2> /dev/null)"
	    	_sgr0="$(path tput sgr0 2> /dev/null)"
	    fi
	    # Colored root prompt (see bugzilla #144620)
	    if test -n "$_bred" -a -n "$_sgr0" ; then
		_u="\[$_bred\]\h"
		_p="\012 #\[$_sgr0\]"
	    else
		_u="\h"
		_p="\012 #"
	    fi
	    unset _bred _sgr0
	else-
	    _u="\u@\h"
	    _p="\012>"
	fi

  In /etc/bash.bashrc set the prompt to this to get the title lines you want.
  Here we remove the item in Red.
	*)
	    # With full path on prompt
	    # PS1="${_t}${_u}:\w${_p} "
	    PS1="${_u}:\w${_p} "
=======================================================================================

This permissions info was copied over from our openSuSE 12.1 and 11.4. So, until we get it edited there may be some things that look and/or sound strange.

It was said that openSUSE 12.1 uses btrfs by default. Well, it doesn't. It uses EXT4. The following descriptions of the File Systems were obtained from Linux Tweaks.
(This also applies to openSUSE 12.2)

Ext2

Ext2 is Linux's 'old standby' filesystem. It was the default for most of the major early Linux distributions. While it has been mostly supplanted by versions 3 and 4, ext2 is still popular on USB and other solid-state devices. This is because it does not have a journaling function, so it generally makes fewer reads and writes to the drive, effectively extending the life of the device.

Recommended Use: USB/Solid State Drives, or any case where you need high stability with minimal reads/writes.

Ext3

The most notable difference between ext2 and ext3 was the introduction of journaling. In short, journaling filesystems are meant to recover more gracefully in the event of a system crash. Whenever you find yourself in doubt about which filesystem to use for Linux, ext3 is nearly always a good bet. It�s extremely mature, extremely well supported, and contains all the features you�re likely to need for a desktop OS.

Recommended Use: If you have no specific reason for another filesystem, ext3 is an excellent default.

Ext4

The most recent in the ext filesystem line, ext4 includes many major improvements over ext3 like larger filesystem support, faster checking, nanosecond timestamps, and verification of the journal through checksums. It�s backward and forward compatible with versions 2 and 3, so you can mount a ext2 or ext3 filesystem as ext4, and the other way around. You may however lose some of the benefits of the newer versions when mounting as the older. Many of the modern Linux distributions now offer ext4 during the install, and some are using it as the default.

Recommended Use: Ext4 should be stable enough for desktop and server needs. If your distribution offers it as an install choice, it should be a good choice for nearly any usage needs.

Btrfs

Btrfs is still in development, and may not yet be ready for production server use. That said, it has been included to some extent in the Linux kernel and is available as an install option in some distributions. Some of the interesting features include transparent compression, snapshots, cloning, and in-place conversion (with rollback) from ext3 and 4. According to the lead developer, Btrfs aims to "let Linux scale for the storage that will be available." Btrfs, once completed and matured, will likely be a strong contender in the Linux filesystem world on both desktops and servers.

Recommended Use: Eventually, Btrfs should make for an excellent filesystem for servers and other high-bandwidth high-storage devices.

A thorn in my side. Even though they are necessary... I strongly dislike them. My "local" setup would probably make a security fanatic cringe.

After the initial installation, the HD situation is this:

Refer: Linux Files and File Permissions - Partion Types

Now then, you will notice that initially root owns everything! The first of the above two references explains all this and is good reading. As I have mentioned before, somewhere in these WebPages, I have two 300GB HD's which at one time would have given me Big Bragin' rights. Now, they are just average. However, the key part is ... there are two drives. In my catestophic System Failure (my own dumb fault), most of my data was saved because of the two drive setup. System(s) on one drive and data on the other. Further details can be found in my Starting Over Web Page.

What this is leading up is... changes. I need to have access to the Downloads area of the 2nd Drive. I have tried to bring down some files and save them... and could not... to the Downloads area. Had to save them in my Own home area. Not the way I had it setup before. There are 3 types of permissions... UGO: User(or Owner) - Group - Other. In each of these there are 3 types, rwx: Read - Write - eXecute. These permissions can be changed for the whole drive, individual folders and on individual files. If you are worried about security, then stay away from 'Other'. It is also referred to as 'World Permissions'. I do believe that should be enough said about that.

However, I am going to give 'World Permissions' on the Downloads Directory. I want to be able to save files from the Net from anywhere on my machine... be it Linux or Windows or a Test System. And I plan on giving myself root group permissions. It is a local system and I am the main user and owner. I'll still be somewhat restricted -but- not totally.

The permissions for Users can be changed in one of two ways. Either via the Command Line while in root, or via YaST2. On the last part I am assuming that you have an openSuSE System.

The Directories and Files are better done from the Command Line. In fact I don't think there is a way to do it in YaST2. (I looked and didn't see anything obvious.) We need to know these commands anyway. chmod ugo +rwx would give ALL the permissions to everyone. For the most part that is NOT what we want to do. This can also be done as chmod 777. Octal digits can be used instead of the letters.

Oh Darn!!  A glitch... on my part. My Downloads dir is on a Windows NTFS Drive! Linux chmod doesn't do a thing. After scratchin' me head for a few, and searchin', I finally remebered that there are some special NTFS commands to do this. All I have to do is remember them! Think I discovered this in 11.3 -or- 11.2.

Well, it was in 11.2, and the same thing happened here... ntfs-config was left out... it is used to modify the read/write permissions on those NTFS Drives. -BUT- the fstab must also be modified.

This is the way it was configured -by default- by the System Install:
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3300631AS_5NF1J2GA-part1          /windows/D  ntfs-3g    users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0
This is what is needed to make it practically useful:
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_ST3300631AS_5NF1J2GA-part1	/windows/D	ntfs-3g    defaults,users,locale=en_US.UTF-8	0	0

/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3300631AS_5NF1J2GA-part5 /windows/L  vfat  users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0

/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3300631AS_5NF1J2GA-part5 /windows/L  vfat  users,gid=users,umask=0000,utf8=true 0 0

Allllrighty now... I did a test save from the Net through Firefox and it worked!! So, we are back in business. Works in RC2.

Doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in this except by us. Old habits die hard. So, we will drop everything else and see IF we can find the problem.

• KDE uses .xinitrc
• XDM uses .xsession
• KDM uses

You have to differentiate between what gets started after you log in but before you start i3:

• ~/.xsession is the way to go when using a login manager (like gdm, kdm, xdm).
• ~/.xinitrc will be used when you use startx

The i3 configuration (usually ~/.i3/config) will of course be used in either case, additionally.

So, where should you put your auto-start entries?

• If you are setting a background image, you can do that in any place (either before i3 starts or afterwards).
• If you are launching a program, you should do that in your i3 configuration so that it will be launched with startup notification support.

Michael has already explained the difference, but I'd like to add a few notes of background (IMHO, it's good to understand how things work step by step):

Based on The X Window User HOWTO:

1. startx will start X by first invoking xinit.
2. xinit will look for a ~/.xinitrc file in the user's home directory, to run as a shell script.
3. xinitrc is used to set up a suitable X environment, and to launch other programs, a.k.a "clients" that we may want available as soon as X is started.
4. The Window Manager, or desktop environment, is typically the last application started.
5. The other, more common, approach is the "GUI log-in", where X is running before log-in. X includes xdm (X Display Manager) for this purpose.
6. Now, ~/.xsession for xdm is the rough equivalent of ~/.xinitrc for startx.
7. Depending on how you start X, either the ~/.xinitrc or the ~/.xsession file will be executed by the server.
8. Finally, if you execute i3wm from ~/.xinitrc or ~/.xsession, then i3wm will read its initial configuration from ~/.i3/config.
9. Done.

Given that, you may like to maintain single version of your personal startup script for X:

• Create the script ~/.xinitrc with your initial settings.

• Make symbolic link for xdm equivalent:

  $ ln -s $HOME/.xinitrc $HOME/.xsession

Also, Fluxbox manual includes an important explanation too:

When X11 is started, your .xinitrc or .xsession script is run, and when the script is done, X11 comes down. Let me repeat that, its important: when .xinitrc is finished, that is when X ends. It isn't when your window manager exits.*

 Tuesday Feb 26th, 2013 / 4:24am  Once again this thing is fixed -and- we don't know how. Probably through someupdate that we forgot we loaded. Anyway, the xterms are being creagted and in the correct places... horizontally and vertically. Thank you Lord.

 4:50am  Oooops... it is and it isn't fixed. We just realized that we we in 12.2 and NOT 12.3... -but- it wasn't working in 12.2 either. Now it is working properly in 12.2 but still not in 12.3. We will just wait and see now till Thursday when RC2 comes out.
 By the way:   They 'may' have fixed the screen freeze problems too. Haven't had one for a while in 12.2.

Installation of VMware 8... the 64-bit version.    8.0.5   8.0.6

 January 9th, 2013 / 5:58pm  We have a new version as of:

VMware-Workstation-Full-8.0.5-893925.x86_64.bundle
File size:326M                VMware Workstation 8.0.5 for Linux 64 bit 
File type: bundle
Release Date:2012-11-06       MD5SUM:5dc860bfe285edb69e31c0889aa9211e 
Build Number:893925 

VMware-Workstation-Full-8.0.6-1035888.x86_64.bundle
File size:326M              VMware Workstation 8.0.6 for Linux 64 bit
File type: bundle
Release Date:2013-03-14     MD5SUM:c23277f146a6aff339041e278352fc96
Build Number:1035888 	

This is concerning our Video problem that we have had for a long, long time. We had edited this earlier braggin' about how it was 'finally' fixed -BUT- we were daringly in Homesite inside Vista inside VMware 8 inside openSuSE 12.3. It Froze/Crashed. This was one of the worst ones. It screwed up this file so bad that we couldn't do a thing with it... in Linux. However, we re-booted into our Windows XP and were able to remove the file. So, in the Battle of the OS's it is now Windows 2 and Linux 0. These scores are successes and non in our re-build of this PC. MotherBoard, Power Suppy and Video Card. Didn't expect that -but- really, these machines were built with Windows in mind. Says so right on the box!
Refer: openSuSE Forums

 October 16th, 2013 / 9:10am   Allllllllrighty now.... we have been fighting this Video Problem for a long, long, long time. Too long. As we have finally determined... our previous cards were -not- strong enough to handle all that we were pushing at them. So, we purchased a more 'Powerfull' card. A PNY GeForce GTX 560. -AND- we had a 'LockUp' with it!! This was -not- supposed to happen! VMware claimed that an nVidia 8800 GT was the minimum requirement and our 560 greatly exceeds the 8800.

Now then, we had automagically decided that we needed to download an nVidia Driver, from nVidia, for our new card and install it -even before- trying it. Now with this latest fiasco we decided to - go back to nouveau. We uninstalled the nVidia Drivers and then let the system use the default - which is nouveau. So far we have been able to use Win2K and Vista inside our VMware 8. Win2K normally works. It is the other two that we have most of our problems with. However, here lately we have been experiencing some problems with our Win2K usage.

 October 16th, 2013 / 11:45am  Dates and times are to keep me straight on what and when I have done something. Have to many "Senior Moments". Anywho, we just copied over our WebPages from the Laptop and have refired up VMware 8 and Win2K. So far it is behaving. Windows Explorer works and will show our LAN. Need to see if Homesite can access the Network and edit our WebPages.

 12:09pm   Well, here we are a few minutes later -and- editing this file inside Homesite inside Win2K inside VMware inside openSuSE 12.3 on our desktop. Whoooaaa... the save 'looked' like it didn't work. However, it turns out that the last time we had used Homesite on this Win2K Virtual machine, we were editing the copy on our Laptop from the Desktop. So, it looks like things are working -and- working better than we expected. ... inside nouveau and the GTX 560.

 1:12pm  This paragraph and some editing on the above paragraph are being written inside Homesite inside Vista inside VMware 8 inside openSuSE 12.3. We also were able to bring up Windows 7 inside VMware. However, that was all we did. We do not have Homesite installed on it yet and we really did nothing, so there is nothing to report. ... other than it came up in nouveau and the GTX 560.

 October 17th, 2013 / 5:15am   Not sure where to put this info anymore. -But- since VMware 8 is involved... and the Major Reason we are having these problems... we will just focus, and continue here, and 'UpDate' the 'other' places as we go along.

This morning it was cold... 56º. When the PC was fired up the Video Card fan made one heck of a racket (like a card in bike spokes)... and it lasted longer. We tried to get the Video Card to "warm up" faster by firing up VMware and getting into Win2K. -But- we were greeted with a kernel panic!! Taking it in stride... we have had so many problems lately. We just PowerOff the PC. Then fire it back up and let it get a 'little' warmer before starting up VMware and Win2K, which is where we are now. The 'racketing' took longer to go away -but- it has finally subsided.

Other than the 'kernel panic', at the above mentioned PowerOn, so far, we haven't had any 'Lockups' using the nouveau driver... and the new card. We are going to switch over to Vista and continue this editing.

 7:55am  As can be seen it is much later. Had to take the dog for her walk. Anywho, we are now inside Vista inside VMware inside openSuSE 12.3 ... using nouveau and the GTX 560. When we fired up Vista, even though Homesite was already installed, it didn't have our snippets. We had to copy those over. We had previously copied our WebPage over from the Laptop so we are now editing a copy on the Desktop.

We are going to now jump over to Windows 7 after a short rest. We are going to have to install Homesite in Windows 7 and we just don't feel like doing it right now.

 9:47am  Ok now, we fired up Windows 7 inside VMware 8 and it cam up ok ... in nouveau and the GTX 560.

 Fixes and Stats - October 19th, 2013 / 9:23am   Well, as mentioned above, this is our second go around for this section. Unfortunately, we can't remember all that was said before -but- it probably doesn't matter anyway. What brought this little portion out -on this day- was/is that we thought that we had been led to a successful fix. -BUT- it was not. Sequences of events are listed below... these have occured over the past two years.

•  nVidia 7300 LE - Our oiginal card.
•  nVidia Geforce 210 - First attempted upgrade. Failed
•  nVidia 7600 GT - Better card from wife's PC. Failed
•  nVidia GT 640 - This card was actually purchased after the 560 in an attempt to see if going UP -but- DOWN would work. Failed
•  nVidia GTX 560 - This is what we are using now. It is a combo of Success and Failure.
•  
•  Now then our 'almost successful' fix was/is to change some settings in our VMware SetUps. We had Vista and Windows 7 set to use two(2) cores. And we had only given them 768MB of RAM. Those settings were changed to One(1) core and 1GB of RAM. We tried Vista first and it looked like that was the fix. -Until- we started writing up our boast about it. Just before we 'finished' the System LockedUp... requiring the PowerOff ReSet. This time it destroyed the file we were working on... this one. This is the 'copy' from our Laptop.
•  

At present we are using the 'new to us' nVidia GTX 560. We still plan on using Vista and Windows 7 via VMware 8 -but- we will do it with caution and knowledge that what we are doing could, and can, be lost. IF something is really, really important then we will not do it inside VMware.

 October 23rd, 2013 / 12:32am  Well, think we have exploited the hardware as far as we can. Along with a couple of Software tweaks for VMware 8, but no satisfaction. Still getting the Feezes/Lockups of the System. Sooooo... we are trying the 'Free' Trial version of VMware 10. This is our first use of it and it is naturally with the Windows System that we have had the most 'Luck' with, Win2K. We've also had some of the Feezes/Lockups with it -but- not as much as with the other two... Vista and Win7. As mentioned above we had a major crash with Vista and it destroyed this file... even though it had been saved. The "problem" appeared to be going from a Linux window to a Windows window... and back. Seems, as we re-call, that is was the 'and back' portion that caused the problem. So 'before' we start switching screens we will make a copy of this 'Update' and save it.

Ok we have journeyed back and forth a couple of times... well a few times... editing this and so far no 'Lockups'. Now to see IF we can get the same sucess with the other two.

   What we did. October 23rd, 2013/2:08pm      Now then, this is all getting real ridiculous. After considerable consternation, and investigation, we tried the, IOP, really drastic fixes.
   1. As mentioned above, we downloaded VMware version 10 trial and installed it.
   2. Our First use was with Win2k Guest... and it worked ok.
   3. Our Second use was with Vista Guest... it was NOT ok... LockedUp.
   4..... Went to the heart doctor.
   5. We opened VMware 10 and then converted each of our VM's into version 10 compatible.
   6. We disabled, or at least made sure it was, AERO in both Vista and Win7.

Right at the moment, 2:37pm, we are inside Homesite editing this file, inside Win2K, inside VMware 10, inside openSuSE 12.3. It is looking promising. We have copied this latest editing and pasted it into a Linux local editor so that we wouldn't loose the info this time IF it locked and crashed.

 Now at 4:34pm  Had to take a nap. Now we are inside Homesite inside Vista, VMware 10 inside openSuSE 12.3 editing this file. Now then, we haven't installed Homesite in the Windows 7 VM that we have at this time. So that is what we will be doing next.

End October insert ...

 March 24th, 2013 / 11:21am  As mentioned above, we got another VMware 8. We are still experiencing the 'Random' Freezes -and- they seem to be mainly when we are using Homesite inside Win2K inside VMware... inside ... now ... openSuSE 12.3. As mentioned elsewhere, we have been having troubles ever since openSuSE 12.1. We believe that some of the 'Freezes' have been outside of the Win2K/VMware scenarios -but- since we spend a 'lot' of time there we can't really be sure. Why don't we just use Windows??... you ask. Cause we like the ability to run different versions inside our VMware and VMware 8Linux is fun, although just like Windows can be frustrating. We used to do 'Real Work' in Linux, -but- now it is mostly just playing. Uhmmm... ReTired.

So, anyway, we are going to install the latest VMware 8 and see IF we have any better luck.

VMware Workstation 8 System Requirements

PC requirements:

• System requirements:
  • 64-bit x86 Processor
  • 1.3GHz or faster core speed
  • 2GB RAM minimum/ 4GB RAM recommended
  • 1GB minimum available hard disk space for guest operating systems
• Workstation installation:
  • 200MB of available disk space for Linux
  • 1.5GB of available disk space for Windows
• For Windows 7 Aero graphics support in a virtual machines
  • 3GB RAM (Host PC)
  • Intel Dual Core, 2.2GHz and above or AMD Athlon 4200+ and above
  • NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT and above or ATI Radeon HD 2600 and above
• Host operating systems* (32-bit & 64-bit):
  • Windows 7
  • Windows Vista
  • Windows XP SP2
  • Windows Server 2008
  • Windows Server 2003
  • Ubuntu 8.04 -11.04
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 - 6.1
  • CentOS 5.0 - 6.0
  • Oracle Linux 5.0 - 6.1
  • openSuSE 10.2 - 11.4
  • SuSE Linux 10.2 - 11 SP1
  • Mandriva Linux 2008 – 2011

Now then, we don't really know why they are requiring a 64-bit Processor because they offer a 32-bit Host version. So, you are REQUIRED to have a 64-bit processor -but- you can load -or- install VMware on a 32-bit -OR- a 64-bit host ... depending on which version you download. We haven't tried the 32-bit version.
-But- alas we put on our thinking cap. They are offering a 32-bit version cause... even though you have 64-bit hardware you can still be running a 32-bit System. Which is just what we had with our Desktop. Still do on the Windows Media side.

 Multi-Media 6:05pm  Installing the Multi-Media junk. Having trouble with two of them... libxine1-codecs and vlc. -And- we see in the forum that others are having troubles with these two. They claim a fix -but- we will just wait for the next Release.
STILL, INSTALL THE MULTI-MEDIA STUFF BEFORE YOU INSTALL VMware 8.
 May 17th, 2014/7:44am  Wellll... not out of the woods yet. Wanted to watch a DVD in SuSE -and- cold not. Not all the formats were installed. Then, when I tried to install them, one of the "Extras" was/is Java 1.7!! That would mess up my Smartphone operations which I had to setup for Java 1.6. So we canceled for now. Just go view it in Windows. The new codecs with a one click install can be found at: KDE Codecs 1 click

 March 24th, 2013 / 10:27pm  IF you need to 'UnInstall' your copy of VMware then execute:
    vmware-installer --uninstall-product vmware-workstation 
If you just run:
    vmware-installer 
it will print all the options you have available.

 January 9th, 2013 - The INSTALL :  Got side tracked and now back to it. We first change to 'root' and then to the VMware 8 dir and then execute the command:
    sh VMware-Workstation-Full-8.0.5-893925.x86_64.bundle

1. Presents a license agreement - to which we agree.
2. It asks IF we would like to check for 'product updates' on startup -and- we say no. We'll check on our own.
3. Next is a question about sending anonymous system data and user statistics to VMware 8. Again we are saying no. Have enough trouble just trying to get things to work normally. We don't need all these background operations. We'll help in other ways.
4. Next it is asking us to enter the user that will initially connect to the Workstation Server. They are choosing 'root' which we will leave.
5. Next we are picking a dir for our 'shared virtual machines'. We are going to accept their suggestion of
       "/var/lib/vmware/Shared VMs"
6. Next they are asking for a port to use for 'https'. We are accepting their suggestion of:
       HTTPS port: 443
7. Now we get the message "The product is ready to be installed." And we click on Install.
     Installing VMware Installer 2.0
     Installing VMware VMX 4.0.5
     Installing VIX core
     Installing Network Editor
        ....
     Installing VMware Player
        ....
     Installing Workstation
     Installation was successful.
   Missed a few, as signified by the dots, -but- we'll get them on the Next Install... IF we remember -and- are fast enough.

1. Launch VMware Workstation 8.
2. Patches are NOT needed... it just works!!
3. OK, that's a LIE!! We still need the Larry Finger Patch.

 January 9th, 2013  We successfully installed VMware 8 and brought up our Win2k. We don't have our Samba and Networking setup... yet... so naturally our Win2k couldn't see the other drives. -But- it will work!! This is our FIRST USE of VMware 8. It looks different and seems to be ok. More info as we use it.
Needed to upgrade Tools from VMware 7 to VMware 8. This is to be added to the virtual machines's vmx file. Read KB article 1714 for tips on editing vmx file.
We just used kwrite.
isolation.tools.guestInitiatedUpgrade.disable = "FALSE"
NOTE: - You must completely exit VMware. -Or- it will over write your change.

 Evaluation/Analysis: January 9th, 2013 / 6:20pm   This was strange and confusing... mainly cause of the "SystemD" changes. In our previous versions we had to kill the start up of VMware in RunLevels 2 and 3. Don't know why the VMware folks put in those start ups -cause- it won't work with them. What gets really confusing is... we essentially killed the VMware processes in ALL levels and it STILL WORKS!! We are in it now.

So what did we do?? Investigated and tried to learn some control of this SystemD process.

1. It does NOT have the RunLevels that we are used to. They have been renamed to 'targets'.
2. Now then you can use the 'chkconfig' command -but- it is not totally successful in all operations.
3. Please Refer: RunLevels

 February 8th, 2013  We want to use the new TopStyle5 more -but- it is really to wide for our VMware screen. Looks like it was designed and setup for the new wide screens. -But-, however, we can fix that. Our VMware screen does not take up the whole width of our current screen. Measurements have shown that our current "physical" screen is wide enough -and- if we use a screen size of 1280x720, instead of 1024x768, that we can get a proper view of the new TopStyle5. The 1024x768 was the 'old' standard. Now it is 1280x????, which in our case is 1280x720. Lots and lots of changes here in this version plus the new Software that we are finally starting to use. Well, we are right now in Homesite again. This will never be departed from. It is to convenient -and- has to many conveniences -and- we have used it for so long that it will be terribly hard to leave it. -But- we are trying and this new screen size is something that we should have done long ago. (Ok, let's be honest. It is just a hair to wide for our physical screen -but- it is good enough for Government work.)
Later Side Note: It 'just fits' IF you make the VMware window a little bit wider than the 'Guest'. Then when you 'position' the VMware frame you can align it so the guest just fits... edge to edge.

By the way, we are using TopStyle 3.1 with our Homesite -and- it has some ways that are NOT in the new one that we like. So, that makes it even more difficult to change. -But- we will get there.

 At 2:53pm  Our joy was shattered. We had been in VMware 10 for a number of hours, jumping between Systems and here in Homesite editing this and the openSuSE 13.1 Web Pages. -- Now then, things got reversed. -- Used to be that we could work successfully in Windows 2000 -but- not in Windows 7. Vista was in the middle, naturally, as it sometimes worked ok and not others. Now, Windows 7 is working -but- Windows 2000 Freezez/LocksUp. This is with 'ALL' the latest fixes. Oh... and there is another peculiarity. Windows 2000 and Vista VM's have:
   Start up this Guest operating system
at the top of their menu and Windows 7 has:
   Power on this ^^^...
.... virtual machine

The 'interuption' above was a Freeze/Lockup... IN Windows 7!!

   October 25th, 2013 / 12:46am     Ok, we are back at it after work. This time we are using the Win2K path. Same inside, inside bla, bla. This time the 'Lord' showed us another "fix". The 3D Accelerator was just to show us that there is hope and the problem can be fixed. This one is down in Linux... To disable the nmi_watchdog interrupt.
     cat /proc/sys/kernel/nmi_watchdog (to check if it is set)
     echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/nmi_watchdog (to disable it, if it is)
     cat /proc/sys/kernel/nmi_watchdog (to confirm the change)
Refer: Geek 2.0 and Linux NMIs on Intel 64-bit Hardware

Now then, there are some who will worry about this change. Actually, the only ones who should worry about it are the kernel developers and maintainers. IF your System is working fine, other than these "Freeze/Lockups" then there 'shouldn't be any worries. It appears that this particular NMI, the nmi_watchdog, is causing more harm than good. You could also write a script that disabled the nmi_watchdog before starting VMware and then re-enabling it after exiting VMware.

Now the proof is in the pudding. We got some false hopes over a couple of the previous fixes, which lead to sadness. This "fix" may lead to Re-activating the 3D Acceleration in VMware. -But- that needs to be tested first. BUT first we see how long this 'fix' can keep us going. So far it is a 'temporary' fix using the instructions above. Cause at next ReBoot of the System it, the nmi_watchdog, will be Re-Enabled. So, we need to make choices here...    Permanent -or- Temporary.??

We are gona be daring and make it Permanent. This accomplished by placing:
            nmi_watchdog=0
on the Command Line in the Boot Loader. The following is performed as 'root'.

• Edit /etc/default/grub and add nmi_watchdog=0
      GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="nomodeset nmi_watchdog=0"
  We had already edited this for the nomodeset now we add the other.
• Execute:
      /usr/sbin/grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
• Execute:
      grub2-install /dev/sda

ReBoot and enjoy....

 October 25th, 2013 / 8:18am  Ok now... we have experienced success before... only to get disappointed later. Sooooo... we are gona 'acid test' this. We have three VM's setup and we are gona go in and out of each -and- even have two of them up at te same time. After reading and investigating all this we have realized that our troubles really started when we switched from 32-Bit to 64-Bit. And in case you haven't read any of our references, nor have reasearched on your own, you will find that the NMI in question is NOT used in the 32-Bit versions!! That was when we had our successes and ran multiple systems a couple of times. We only entered into this 64-Bit world by force... not by choice. But that is another story ... here somewhere. Now we have already been greatly enthused by this latest fix cause we have used two different VM's -and- jumped in and out of Linux and Windows without a Freeze!! Now to really, really work it.

Wooohooo... this paragraph is being written in(here we go again) Homesite inside Win2K inside VMware 10 inside openSuSE 12.3 ... WHILE ... the Windows 7 VM is still running. We did of course exit Homesite before starting up Homesite in Windows 2000. Now we did, however, get this message when we started up the Win2K VM:

We clicked OK and continued.

 October 25th, 2013 / 8:56am  Allllllrighty now.... We just closed out Homesite in Win2K and jumped over to our "already open" Win7 VM and started up its copy of Homesite and are writing/editing this paragraph. So... we can have THREE Systems going again:

• Linux Host
• Windows 2000 Guest
• Windows 7 Guest
• No... We are NOT gona push it for FOUR!! We only have 4GB of RAM.

 October 25th, 2013 / 12:55pm  And we can't forget about our Vista. We really kinda like it. Mainly cause of the graphics and the way it looks. NOT because of the way it operates. Not enough thought in it before they released it... but then that is what everyone is saying. MS took a bad rap on that one. Anywho, it works ok and this paragraph is being written inside it. All the 'other' insides are presant also.

We do believe that there is another benefit to 'all' these fixes. Our System seems to be faster!! Just an FYI.

As stated further down, this was started in our openSuSE 13.1 page cause, well it was/is a disaster anyway, so why not.?.? I'm sure that statement may irritate some developers IF they read this -but- it is a fact. During this latest phase of our "Linux trials and tribulations", we have tried the Milestones and the Beta and RC1. None of them would function well at all. Used to be that by RC1 we would get a vesion good enough to almost make it our main. Not this time. So, our openSuSE 13.1 page didn't have a lot anyway. We haven't been good testers of this version because... because we had to replace our Motherboard and found that we also needed a better Video Card which would require a stronger PSU. Also this Freeze/Lockup Problem has been creeping up and getting worse and worse. The fact that we "finally" RTFM and learned some things we also want to give credit to the 'Lord' for answering our feeble prayers and guiding us to the answer..

So long, so long we have been fighting this problem. Screen Freezes/Lockups... requiring a PowerOff ReSet. -And- it was only when we had VMware going. We have looked and looked for answers. Contacted nVidia, tried to contact VMware -but- they went from free, back in 1999/2000 to greedy. Now it costs money just to talk to them about an issue. I refuse to pay becuase of 'their' problems.

Well, the 'Lord' finally gave the answer... 'He' implanted the correct search words in our head (and possibly yours, IF you are here because of a search) and we came across a couple of sites that claimed to be able to stop these Random Freezes. The first one talked about things that we had already tried -but- they may be of help to others. It is at: MustBeGeek You can go there at your leisure. However, the Lord's real gift was in this next site, cause they have the fix: ValCo Labs. It involves 'unchecking' the "Accelerate 3D graphics"!!!

This VMware 10 section was created and edited in our openSuSE 13.1 page cause we didn't trust everything... yet. After so long you learn, well you begin to understand that NOT all fixes work. We have lost work many, many times due to this Freeze/Lockup problem. So, since this WebPage was in its infancy, we decided we could 'test' the fix in it. It seems that the Freezes/Lockups were always when we were in Homesite, inside a Windows Variation, inside VMware, inside openSuSE. So to test the 'trend' we are in that path... -and- it is working and NOT breaking. We have even jumped around in the System using it like we had in the past... the further back past. Not sure when they made this '3D Acceleration' a default check of the box -or- when we somehow checked it... -but- it can be, and is, a bear. -And-, unlike the person relaying this info, our latest nVidia card is up there in the performance ratings!! Needless to say, IF you are reading this on our openSuSE 12.3 page it is cause we copied/pasted it here.

We are so happy again. Can bounce around from Linux to Windows and back and forth WITHOUT all the worries!! It was not good for our heart and blood pressure.

Now thanks to the 'Lord our God' and His intervention, we can enjoy the benefits of our System again... -and- it is going to last us longer, like we had said in the beginning. We were worried about loosing it cause it was 'old' and 'behind the times'. -But- it is not!! We like the cabinet -or- case that it is in and don't want to loose it. In fact IF we have to UpGrade, we may just buy another new Motherboard, that has i5 or i7 capabilities, and a greater max RAM that will fit our case. -But- for now we are happy... the VMware Freeze/Lockups are gone!! We no longer operate in fear!

 UpDates!!! 8:12am  Did we ever tell you how much we hate them??? As mentioned above, we decided to 'try' the UpDate method for moving 'from' 12.2 'to' 12.3. The attempt in our 'Test Area' was a dismal failure. Once because of 'UpDates'... at the end of the install!! and once because of having sources from 12.2 NOT getting removed and then causing a conflict in nVidia and VMware 8 installs.

Now, AFTER our... so far... SUCCESSFUL UpDate Install it claims there are 'more' UpDates. Been claiming this since shortly after our install. Started out with a count of '63' and now today is up to '72'. We are gona 'byte the bullet' and give it a try. We are still experiencing our 'Random System Freezes' and we are hoping that the latest 'Updates' will help and not hinder our progress. We 'Started' the process of switching 'from' nVidia 'to' nouveau -but- so far it doesn't look successful. Jump to our nVidia section for further info.

 April 22, 2013 / 6:15pm  We get told by 'Apper', when we LogOn, that there are UpDates... usually a bunch. -But- when we check the 'OnLine' UpDates in YaST2 they are NOT the same. In fact the quantity is NOT the same. So, we need to investigagte.

Well, we did and it seems that they both work 'ok'. We are using 'Apper' this go around and we will see what happens. It claimed there were 52 Updates and then after saying apply it said there were 154 others that were required!! Lots and lots of UpDating. Maybe it will fix our System. Right now we are in the 'Recovery' boot. Normal boot is hanging at the 'Plymoth' screen.

 November 16th, 2013 / 8:53pm  Asked the folks on the forum and we got this explanation from Henk van Velden:
Apper does not only check for Updates from bpth Update repos, it will also present you newer version from packages on all your subscribed repos.

Thus it will e.g. show you that there are newer versions of packages in the Packman repo.

YaST Online Update and zypper patch will only show/install what is in the Update repos. zypper dup will do all newer versions.

And from James:

Just do this ...
Code:

YaST (root password) / Software / Software Management / Package / All Packages / Update if newer version available
						

YaST (root password) / Software / Software Management / Options / check "Allow vendor change"
						

 April 22, 2013 / 6:48pm  We have performed the UpDate -and- in checking we have:

> inxi -v4 -c3
System:    Host: dusty-tr2.TRComputing Kernel: 3.7.10-1.1-desktop x86_64 (64 bit, gcc: 4.7.2) 
           Desktop: N/A Distro: openSUSE 12.3 (x86_64) VERSION = 12.3 CODENAME = Dartmouth
Machine:   System: HP Pavilion 061 product: ER884AA-ABA m7480n version: 0ny1114RE101EMERY00
           Mobo: ASUSTek model: EMERY version: 1.05 Bios: Phoenix version: 3.17 date: 09/15/2006
CPU:       Dual core Intel Pentium D CPU (-MCP-) cache: 2048 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 vmx) bmips: 12803.8 
           Clock Speeds: 1: 3200.958 MHz 2: 3200.958 MHz
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA G72 [GeForce 7300 LE] bus-ID: 01:00.0 X.Org: 1.13.2 driver: nvidia Resolution: 1280x1024@60.0hz 
           GLX Renderer: GeForce 7300 LE/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 2.1.2 NVIDIA 304.88 Direct Rendering: Yes
Network:   Card: Intel NM10/ICH7 Family LAN Controller driver: e100 ver: 3.5.24-k2-NAPI port: ed00 bus-ID: 02:08.0
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: 00:17:31:11:96:cb
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 800.2GB (31.1% used) 1: /dev/sdb ST3300631AS 300.1GB 
           2: /dev/sda WDC_WD5000AAKX 500.1GB 
Partition: ID: / size: 47G used: 9.1G (20%) fs: ext4 ID: /home size: 203G used: 68G (34%) fs: ext4 
           ID: swap-1 size: 2.62GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap ID: swap-2 size: 2.62GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap 
Info:      Processes: 175 Uptime: 0:01 Memory: 638.0/3519.6MB Runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 4.7.2 Client: Shell inxi: 1.7.31 

1. In /etc/sysconfig/kernel, NO_KMS_IN_INITRD is set to 'no'
2. In grub2 default, nouveau.noaccel=1 -and- there is 'NO' nomodeset.
3. nouveau is 'NOT' blacklisted
4. -But- we appear to have a 'working' nVidia Driver.
5. -And- VMware is working!! In fact this editing is taking place inside Homesite inside Win2K inside VMware.

 May 13th, 2013 / 4:35am  Fired up our 'Main System' today -and- guess what? The two terminal windows that I have been moaning about not comming up in the correct vertical position ... DID!! What has changed?? Yesterday we installed two UpDates. One of them involved Xorg. We didn't record them... shame on us... so we don't really have anymore info than that. However, in searching for a way to check on Linux UpDate History we found this: openSuSE Forums.

 Hi-Lites  

Since this was an 'UpDate' we are going to 'UnInstall' what is left. No... it is showing up in YaST2 so we will try to Re-Install it from there... it worked. Had to allow:

Vellyy Intellllesting... Quanta came up the fist time -and- it still had the last item edited in it!! It Works. Well... almost... complained about:

For reference:
 Quanta  Quanta was installed and tested. For the first time it DID NOT complain about any missing files.
Has a One Click install at: kde3-quanta This was found during our last Crash Recovery. Also Refer: openSuSE Quanta

Allllllrighty now... this is presented here... because. Now we don't claim to know everything... yet ... -but- we are working on it. During this particular install we had some problems. Can't remember the last time that we installed an rpm.bin file. But, our download area is in one of our Windows Partitions. The rpm.bin file refused to work there. Finally after much fussin' and some choice words we move the file over to the /usr dir on our Linux Partition. It worked!! And that is all we have to say about the matter.

We have this 'Special' install of Java because we need a specific version for our Cellphone Build Environment. -Or- so it appears at this time. The version we need is:
    jdk-6u45-linux-x64
This is that install.

We used and heavily followed: SDB:Installing Java and referenced and used some this: Install on openSuSE and

./opt/sun/javadb
./opt/sun/javadb/demo/programs/vtis/java
./opt/sun/javadb/demo/programs/scores/java
./opt/sun/javadb/javadoc

 Java tests:  These will tell you IF and which version is installed.
    java -version
    which java
    update-alternatives --list java

 After the 1 click intall  
    java -version

java version "1.6.0_45"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_45-b06)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.45-b01, mixed mode)

Step 4: Check the version:

Step 5: So the version is still pointing to the old one. We have to use the alternatives here to update the version. The newly installed Java is at this location
    /usr/java/jdk1.7.0_21/ :

zypper rm icedtea-web
update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/java" "java" "/usr/java/latest/bin/java" 1
update-alternatives --set java /usr/java/latest/bin/java

ln -s /usr/java/latest/jre/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so /usr/lib64/browser-plugins/

That's it !!!
The JDK Path is: /usr/lib64/jvm/java-1.6.0-sun-1.6.0

          jdk1.6.0
   ___________|_________________
  |           |                 |
 bin         lib               jre
  |           |         ________|__________
java*     tools.jar    |                   |        
javac*    dt.jar      bin                 lib                
javap*                 |       ________ ___|___ _________ ________ _______       
javah*               java*    |        |       |         |        |       |    
javadoc*                    rt.jar    ext   security   i386    applet  fonts
                        charsets.jar   |              /    \
                                  localedata.jar  server  client
                                                            

Comments...

This was to be included in the VMware section but we decided to make a section of its own. Why?? Cause of changes which really started back in openSuSE 12.1. What changes??? SystemD. This has caused 'Big' changes in our ways of understanding and operation. Especially in the RunLevels.

Systemd is the "new" way of initializing and starting Linux. ie; the boot process. Systemd takes over the entire boot process. The script /etc/init.d/boot is completely ignored, and 'startpar' is never called. The sysv initscripts including /etc/init.d/boot.* are handled natively by systemd.

Every service that installs a native systemd service file, completely disables that way in the sysv init scrip when systemd is used. The newer versions of D-Bus and udev install these service files, and therefore the scripts in /etc/init.d/ and all the symlinks there are ignored for these services. Over time, most commons services will no longer use init scripts if systemd is used to bring up the system.

 RunLevels 2 and 3  These were/are our main reason for investigating this portion of Linux. In the previous installs, VMware, for some reason, was setting the 'process active' in runlevels 2, 3 and 5. These were causing problems. We could NOT get VMware to operate correctly with that setup. We had to eliminate runlevels 2 and 3. This was accomplished in YaST2. However, now with systemd, that feature is no longer available.

We found that the following sysv commands will still work:
   chkconfig -list vmware
     This will still show the runlevel status.
   chkconfig --level 23 vmware off
     We thought this would turn off only runlevels 2 and 3
     -but- turned off 5 also.
   chkconfig --level 5 vmware on
     This enabled 5 -but- also enabled 2 and 3!

 Possibly Interesting Side Note:  We were playing with the above commands while writing this -- in Homesite in Win2K in VMware in our new openSuSE 12.3. Guess that shows the above only affects the StartUp.

Now then, AFTER installation of openSuSE 12.3, we installed VMware 8.0.5 and then had troubles. It wasn't properly recognizing mouse clicks and keyboard operations. Then we remembered the "runlevel problem". Our investigation led to the above. Anyway... VMware and Win2K are running correctly now.

However, we can not remember when it started running correctly. -BUT- we have found that "without" changing anything it will work after a restart -or- it will not work after a restart. Changing the Runlevels states -or- the actaul state of them seems to have NO effect.

This is only Milestone 2 and it works -most- of the time. So we will just wait and watch. Not sure who would claim the responsibility anyway. The systemd command:
   systemctl status vmware.service
     Shows that it is working and the status of associated files.

 January 11th, 2012 / 7:01am  
Think we have it isolated as to when we get these "problems". On StartUps AFTER a PowerOn it "Enables the Virtualization Capabilities"
of our Processor and we have the "problem". We then must exit Windows -usually with great difficulties- and then Close and Restart VMware. Everything is fine then -until- you PowerOff and PowerOn again. The the "First" use of VMware has the mouse click and keyboard problems. Actually, it is more just the mouse than the keyboard. So far we have used a combo of the mouse to get the focus and then the 'Enter' key to accomplish the task. Yep. It is a strange -bug-.

-And- along those lines... we are having better performance and luck with this "latest" version of the nouveau Driver. So far, there have been NO FreezeUps/LockUps whilst we have been using this new System. Matter of fact we are using this openSuSE 12.3 M2 more than our "normal" openSuSE 12.2 Main System. -But- then let's be honest. The main thing we are using the Linux system for is the "Local Networking". We fire up our system in Linux mode and then almost immediately start up VMware and jump into Windows so we can use Homesite to write up our Linux adventures which most of the time involve re-setting up a new openSuSE System. -But- it keeps us occupied.

Some text copied from these:
Refer: systemd and Linux Runlevels

Ok now, the following is a list of our Repos in SuSE 12.2. We need to try a couple of them in our new SuSE 12.3 to see if the stuff still works. -Or- if there is a 12.3 version available. (This list is here for a memory jogger.)

> zypper lr
#  | Alias                        | Name                               | Enabled | Refresh
---+------------------------------+------------------------------------+---------+--------
 1 | SuSE                         | SuSE                               | Yes     | Yes    
 2 | download.nvidia.com-opensuse | nVidia Graphics Drivers            | Yes     | Yes    
 3 | libdvdcss                    | DVD Repository                     | Yes     | No     
 4 | openSUSE-12.2-1.6            | openSUSE-12.2-1.6                  | No      | No     
 5 | packman                      | Packman repository (openSUSE_12.2) | Yes     | No     
 6 | packman.inode.at-suse        | Packman Repository                 | Yes     | Yes    
 7 | repo-debug                   | openSUSE-12.2-Debug                | No      | Yes    
 8 | repo-debug-update            | openSUSE-12.2-Update-Debug         | No      | Yes    
 9 | repo-debug-update-non-oss    | openSUSE-12.2-Update-Debug-Non-Oss | No      | Yes    
10 | repo-non-oss                 | openSUSE-12.2-Non-Oss              | Yes     | Yes    
11 | repo-oss                     | openSUSE-12.2-Oss                  | Yes     | Yes    
12 | repo-source                  | openSUSE-12.2-Source               | No      | Yes    
13 | repo-update                  | openSUSE-12.2-Update               | Yes     | Yes    
14 | repo-update-non-oss          | openSUSE-12.2-Update-Non-Oss       | Yes     | Yes    

 February 12th, 2013 / am  

Hilights that we are interested in. For further info please consult the Reference. Some of these version numbers may be wrong cause they did update some of this stuff to even newer versions -before- the Public Release.

• KDE is updated to 4.9.1 release - This might squeeze into 4.10... It did.
• Glibc is updated to 2.16 release
• Kernel is updated to 3.6.0-rc7... It has moved up to 3.7
• X.org updated to 1.13 release
• All X.org video drivers are updated to latest stable release (or snapshot).
• Mesa updated to upcoming v9 snapshot.
• DRM libraries updated to 2.4.33 release
• Qt updated to 4.8.2 release.
• Emacs updated to 24.2 release.
• OpenJDK updated to 1.7.0.6 release
• Banshee media player is updated to 2.5.1 release.
• zsh is updated to 5.0 release
• SourceCodePro font from Adobe is now available among other new font packages.
• Support for OPUS codec added via libopus
• jpeg-turbo is now the default jpegv8 implementation, jpegv6 is dropped.

James from Austin Goodies

 grub2cmd  GNU Grub2 Command Help/Config Editor - Version: 1.94
Refer: Grub2Cmd

 nsf  N.S.F. - New Script File, Bash Script File Header Creator - Version 2.81
Refer: NSF

 sysedit  SYSEdit - System File Editor - Version 1.00
Refer: SYSEdit

 fastboot  FastBoot for Grub 2 or Grub Legacy Menu using Kexec - Version 2.13
Refer: FASTBoot

 swat  Samba Web Administration Tool - Setup & Creation Script - 1.04
Refer: SWAT

This was started in openSuSE 13.1 cause of the delay troubles we were having and trying to find out why. Never did... yet. So we are going to document a properly working version. This one... even though it is not as 'far' into systemd. Perhaps that will help us... to see the differences.

Systemd is a system and service manager, compatible with SysV and LSB init scripts for Linux. systemd provides aggressive parallelization capabilities, uses socket and D-Bus activation for starting services, offers on-demand starting of daemons, keeps track of processes using Linux cgroups, supports snapshotting and restoring of the system state, maintains mount and automount points and implements an elaborate transactional dependency-based service control logic. It can work as a drop-in replacement for sysvinit.

1. alsasound - Yes - Set up ALSA sound system
2. apache2 - Yes - Apache 2.2 HTTP Server
3. atd - No - This program allows you to run jobs at specified times.
4. autofs - No - AutoFS is a kernel-based automounter for Linux.
5. avahi-daemon - Yes - ZeroConf daemon
6. avahi-dnsconfd - No - ZeroConf daemon
7. cifs - No - Import remote SMB/CIFS (MS Windows) file systems
8. cron - Yes - Cron job service
9. cups - Yes - CUPS printer daemon
10. dbus - Yes - D-Bus is a message bus system for applications to talk to one another
11. dhcpd - No - ISC DHCP 4.x Server
12. dhcpd6 - No - ISC DHCP 4.x Server
13. dnsmasq - Yes - Starts Internet name service masq caching server (DNS)
14. esound - No - Sound daemon with network support
15. fbset - Yes - Framebuffer setup
16. gpm - No - Console mouse support
17. haveged - No - Daemon to feed entropy into /dev/urandom
18. irq_balancer - No - Irqbalancer daemon providing irq balancing on MP-machines
19. joystick - No - Set up analog joysticks
20. kbd - Yes - Keyboard settings
21. kexec - No - Enables reboot through kexec
22. lirc - No - lirc daemon
23. mcelog - Yes - Machine Check Architecture/Error (MCA/MCE) Implementations
24. mdadmd - No - mdamd daemon monitoring MD devices
25. mysql - No - Start the MySQL database server
26. named - No - Domain Named System (DNS) server, named
27. network - Yes - Configure network interfaces and set up routing
28. nfs - No - NFS client services
29. nmb - Yes - Samba NetBIOS naming service over IP
30. ntp - No - Network time protocol daemon (ntpd)
31. openvpn - No - OpenVPN tunnel
32. pm-profiler - No - Script infrastructure to enable/disable certain power management funtions
33. postfix - Yes - start the Postfix MTA
34. powerd - No - Start the UPS monitoring daemon
35. purge-kernels - Yes - Purge old kernels
36. raw - No - raw devices
37. rpcbind - No - TI-RPC program number mapper
38. rpmconfigcheck - No - rpm config file scan
39. rsyncd - No - Start the rsync server daemon
40. smartd - Yes - Monitors disk and tape health via S.M.A.R.T.
41. smb - Yes - Samba SMB/CIFS file and print server
42. sshd - No - Start the sshd daemon
43. svnserve - No - svnserve
44. timidity - No - TiMidity++ ALSA midi emulation
45. vmamqpd - Yes - This service starts and stops vmamqpd
46. vmware - Yes - This service starts and stops VMware services
47. vmware-USBArbitrator - Yes - This service starts and stops the USB Arbitrator
48. vmware-workstation-server - Yes - This service starts and stops the Workstation as a Server daemaon
49. xdm - Yes - X Display Manager
50. xfs - No - X Font Server
51. xinetd - No - Starts the xinit daemon.
52. ypbind - No - Start the ypbind (necessary for a NIS client)

Comments...

Well, to quote the Author, USB formatting should be simple -but- it wasn't. Now it is with his program. Found at muktware. It has instructions for installing via a 1 click method and you can choose various formats.
-BUT- it doesn't work!! Had to move over to Windows 7 and format it to NTFS. Cause I couldn't find a correct instruction combo in Linux that would work. Besides, with an NTFS format I can read it in both systems.

My main reason for desiring this in the first place was/is I couldn't copy a 4.1GB file to a 16GB USB Drive!! Reason?? It was formatted with FAT32 which has a 4GB file size limit. Now then, we are not out of the woods yet. Other formats can create problems to. For that explanation jump to here. -BUT- we used the NTFS format anyway ... for reasons stated above.

Comments...

Blend is a free, fully standards-compliant CSS template designed by Free CSS Templates. This free template is released under a Creative Commons Attributions 2.5 license, so you're pretty much free to do whatever you want with it (even use it commercially) provided you keep the links in the footer intact. Have fun with it :)

This template is also available as a WordPress theme at Free WordPress Themes.

Yep! This is a copy of the Template. Nope! We haven't deleted, or edited, all of the "Example Sections"... yet. -And- we get quite verbose in some of our topics too, sooo... you might want to pay attention to the "In Page Jump List" over on the Left. Now then, this is supposed to be about openSuSE 12.3 -but- we have just encountered Windows 7 via our New Laptop -and- we are using it more and more. Not only that, the Networking of BOTH Systems is so good that we are able to link these two together as one. Haven't been able to do that for a long, long time. Course, in reallity we didn't have two powerful machines avaliable either. Only got to collaborate with my wife's machine very little. Now we have two available FULL time!! So, the Laptop and Windows 7 will be a bigger part of this than usual... -or- not.

 April 2nd, 2013  This 'Blend' Section was copied over from our Version 12.2. We really like this new 'Blend' Template that we have found. There is one other by 'DCarter' that we like that is similar -but- different from this one.

    Comments

Added July 26th, 2012 TRComputing

Now then, as stated above, we haven't removed all of the "example" sections... yet. One of them is this Comments section. We believe that this had something to do with possibly adding a "blog" so that visitors could leave their comments. We, however, are NOT ready to deal with that aspect. We at one time had a section to leave comments and it got thoroughly abused!! So, the Comments section will just be for us... for now. These will be the sporadic comments added at later times.
Refer: What is a Blog?

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