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suse-9.3 ...32 or 64?

by Gregory Avedissian

I just put together a new machine for a friend. Sempron 3100 on ASUS K8V-MX. It was a rush job, because the computer she was using died. (Same one I wrote about recently that was having lockup problems - pretty sure now that it was the power supply. The last time she tried to turn it on, a big spark came out the back, and that was the end of it. Memory and vid card still test good.) So now that she has a shiny new 64-bit system, I'm wondering whether to go with 64-bit OS or stick to 32. I haven't had much time to research it, but I understand that there are some problems with Macromedia Flash and Java, which she needs. Some of the reading I've done suggests that you can install the 32-bit version of Firefox with the plugins to get around this. Anyone know if it's really as easy as that? Are there any problems with running 32-bit software on a 64-bit OS? Any particular bugginess with 64 that I should know about in advance? She runs KDE desktop and uses Gimp a lot. Oh, one other glitch I ran into - I tried to do the network install, but the boot cd doesn't have the kernel modules for the LAN chip. I was instructed to go to the install cd and make a "modules 3" floppy. There is no modules 3 image on the cd or on the ftp site, but there are images for "bootdisk1, bootdisk2, etc." Do I have to make the whole set and install from floppy, or is there a way to find out which disk has the right module and just use that with the cd? Or could I just put an older card in it for the install and then change the network card setup afterward? I'm thinking the latter would be easier than finding five or six blank floppy disks to use. Thanks, Greg

Dec. 30, 2005

Re: [Wlug] FC2 and FC3 to FC4 ... ?

by Chuck Anderson

On Thu, Dec 29, 2005 at 05:50:18PM -0500, Theo Van Dinter wrote: > around I was thinking of either using yum or burning some CDs and doing > the upgrade method (which the Fedora guys recommended to me). > > Anyone have suggestions about what method works best? Any gotchas I should > worry about, etc? Using anacaconda is the official, supported method of upgrading a Fedora system. The reason is simple: certain tasks cannot be done on the live running system, but instead must be done from outside the normal system environment (e.g. filesystem/lvm conversion, incompatible kernel<->userspace changes like NPTL, new kernel features like SELinux support, rpm scriptlets). I've had success upgrading to FC4 from as far back as Red Hat Linux 7.3. That being said, yum sometimes works well if you take into account some of the manual tasks you may need to do before and after, e.g. sometimes you must remove several older kernel versions manually before attempting the yum update. The success of this method deteriorates increasingly as the version difference of the before and after OSes increases. I have not used this method extensively except between FC test and development (rawhide) releases. What I have been doing recently for remote upgrades is using the grub installed on the existing OS to boot the anaconda installer environment with the proper command line arguments to start a VNC-based network install. You then reboot the system, wait a few moments, and connect to it via VNC to finish the graphical install manually. Of course, you could also use kickstart to completely automate this with no user interaction required. cd /boot wget -O vmlinuz-fc4 http://<fc-mirror>/pub/fedora/linux/core/4/i386/os/isolinux/vmlinuz wget -O initrd-fc4.img http://<fc-mirror>/pub/fedora/linux/core/4/i386/os/isolinux/initrd edit /etc/grub.conf, adding this to the beginning: title Fedora Core 4 installer root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz-fc4 headless ip=dhcp ksdevice=eth0 method=http://<fc-mirror>/pub/fedora/linux/core/4/i386/os lang=en_US keymap=us vnc vncpassword=<password> initrd /initrd-fc4.img Notes: 1. If you have multiple NICs, eth0 may not be the one you think it will be once you reboot into the installer. Therefore, it is highly recommended to specify the desired install NIC using its MAC address: ksdevice=aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:Ff 2. Don't forget to set the default boot entry in grub to the installer entry, e.g. default=0 Reboot: shutdown -r now vncviewer <remote-ip>:0 IMPORTANT: Be sure to select "Create a new bootloader configuration". I found out the hard way that "Update existing bootloader configuration" will leave you with no way to remotely boot into the new OS after the upgrade is completed, because grub will default to booting the installer over and over again, and remotely re-upgrading and selecting "Create a new bootloader configuration" afterwards will not re-write the bootloader because it only does that if a new kernel gets installed, which it won't since it was already installed the first time you upgraded... Finally, SELinux doesn't get enabled automatically on upgrades, but you can easily enable it manually afterwards: yum install setools selinux-policy-targeted touch /.autorelabel reboot More info: http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/fedora-install-guide-en/ http://www.arenatechniques.com/kb/index.php/Anaconda http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/selinux-faq/

Dec. 30, 2005

Re: [Wlug] Busybox / mips / embedded Linux question

by Andy Stewart

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Mike Frysinger wrote: > On Thursday 29 December 2005 17:42, Andy Stewart wrote: > >>Within busybox, command substitution and pipes don't work on this MIPS >>box (but they do work on my x86_64). > > > are you using uClibc 0.9.28 or the uClibc snapshot ? busybox release or > busybox snapshot ? is your cpu big endian mips ? i can gen a buildroot over > here and test it on a little endian mips box pretty quickly, but i'll have to > fiddle to boot my big endian mips ... Hi Mike, Here's what I'm using: uClibc-0.9.28 busybox-1.01 target cpu is little endian (mipsel) Linux kernel is 2.4.30 (yes, I hacked in the headers...) > > also, you could have just posted this to the busybox mailing list, we dont > mind these sort of things ;) > -mike > I considered that, especially when I saw a "Mike Frysinger" over there, and wondered if there was more than one of you on the Internet. :-) Thanks! Andy - -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA, USA http://www.wlug.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFDtH0/Hl0iXDssISsRAr0iAKCIAgChF0hmBtJacLyW0yp1mp/WGQCeLgkh hyrJzp8NzhaDf5QV2AUYhPc= =OQGz -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Dec. 30, 2005

Re: [Wlug] Busybox / mips / embedded Linux question

by Mike Frysinger

On Thursday 29 December 2005 17:42, Andy Stewart wrote: > Within busybox, command substitution and pipes don't work on this MIPS > box (but they do work on my x86_64). are you using uClibc 0.9.28 or the uClibc snapshot ? busybox release or busybox snapshot ? is your cpu big endian mips ? i can gen a buildroot over here and test it on a little endian mips box pretty quickly, but i'll have to fiddle to boot my big endian mips ... also, you could have just posted this to the busybox mailing list, we dont mind these sort of things ;) -mike

Dec. 29, 2005

FC2 and FC3 to FC4 ... ?

by Theo Van Dinter

Hey folks, I have an FC2 and FC3 machine which I want to get upgraded to FC4. In the past, I used to spend an hour or two doing this type of thing manually which was a pain but generally got the job done ... This time around I was thinking of either using yum or burning some CDs and doing the upgrade method (which the Fedora guys recommended to me). Anyone have suggestions about what method works best? Any gotchas I should worry about, etc? Thanks in advance! :) -- Randomly Generated Tagline: "If you lend someone $20, and never see that person again, it was probably worth it." - Zen Musings

Dec. 29, 2005

Re: [Wlug] Busybox / mips / embedded Linux question

by Andy Stewart

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 > > I've been scouring the net and cannot find an answer. I must be doing > something wrong, but I know not what. Does anybody have any helpful hints? Other notes: With respect to file descriptors, I noticed on my x86_64 system that /dev/fd is a symlink to /proc/self/fd, but not so on the MIPS box. I added that link to no avail. It seemed relevant, but perhaps not. /proc is enabled on the MIPS box. I also checked via ulimit to insure that I wasn't somehow limited in the number of open file descriptors. No problems there as far as I can tell. I think that's it for now. Andy - -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA, USA http://www.wlug.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFDtGfoHl0iXDssISsRAlMbAJ4odnJkq+6nmuUmwqnobUFHCeKnCQCfW0lo Ih8arrn+mj7WxdbUpmCHmqo= =R4qz -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Dec. 29, 2005

Busybox / mips / embedded Linux question

by Andy Stewart

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 HI gang, I am playing with a single board computer (SBC) in an attempt to make a diskless, fanless, silent firewall. Specifically, its the RouterBoard 532 (http://www.routerboard.com) The processor is MIPS based (4Kc). I've been using the buildroot software (nice!) which made creating the cross compiler enviroment considerably easier than my previous (failed) attempts at doing this by hand. My cross compiler environment is now working quite nicely. I have created an environment where I have loaded software onto a compact flash card and booted Linux 2.4.30 on this box. I have logged in and gotten the box talking on the net. All 3 ethernet ports function, as well as ssh and dhcp. Sweet! My next step is to take the SuSE firewall scripts (they are GPL) and run them on this box. However, I'm hitting a wall that I don't think I should be hitting. Within busybox, command substitution and pipes don't work on this MIPS box (but they do work on my x86_64). command substitution example: echo `cat /etc/hostname` pipes: ls -l | grep foo With neither of these working, real scripts don't work too well. :-( I've traced the source code (gotta love free software!) and the code fails whenever it calls the function dup2(). I'm not sure why dup2() fails, but it does, returning EBADF (bad file descriptor). I tried installing bash and noticed exactly the same thing. dup2() seems to be implemented as a system call into the kernel, but that's where I get lost. I've been scouring the net and cannot find an answer. I must be doing something wrong, but I know not what. Does anybody have any helpful hints? Thanks! Andy - -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA, USA http://www.wlug.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFDtGZXHl0iXDssISsRAjuLAKCFg/zGddsXpVH8rIe/m4n2I/OSTACaAoQf BDkJ30y7RJ634XazzPgGAWY= =w+LK -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Dec. 29, 2005

Re: [Wlug] Re: Wlug Digest, Vol 26, Issue 19

by Chuck Anderson

On Thu, Dec 29, 2005 at 12:54:29PM -0500, Carlton C. Stedman II wrote: > The situation you describe about the removable drives mounting in /media > suggests it is using udev, hal, d-bus and ivman. Your home system should FC3 and FC4 come preconfigured to use udev, hal, d-bus, and gnome-volume-manager. ivman doesn't ship with FC. When hal notices a new block device (via the kernel hotplug mechanism), it should call /etc/hal/device.d/50-fstab-sync.hal which is a symlink to /usr/sbin/fstab-sync. This is what creates the mount points in /media and adds/removes entries from /etc/fstab. Entries that have been added by fstab-sync are marked with "managed" in the options field. Then gnome-volume-manager mounts the device if the option "Mount removable drives when hot-plugged" is set. Since I've never needed to change the defaults here, I'm not sure how to fix the specific problem Bill is having. I would assume that removing all traces of manual configuration in /etc/fstab etc. should cause the default behavior to be restored.

Dec. 29, 2005

Re: [Wlug] OpenWrt

by Matt Higgins

I run OpenWrt at work and at home, it is a very nice piece of work, never had a lockup. If you have some more dough I recommend net4801 http://www.soekris.com/net4801.htm The one I have is currently running OpenBSD but is of course Linux friendly and you can do a lot more with it. -Matt On 12/23/05, Mike <mwp(a)sdf.lonestar.org> wrote: > At the last meeting we briefly discussed building a Linux Router from a > single board computer. I was poking around the net and found the OpenWrt > project. I'm curious if anyone has any experience with OpenWrt? > > Happy Holidays, > Mike > > OpenWrt: http://wiki.openwrt.org/FrontPage > > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug >

Dec. 29, 2005

Re: Wlug Digest, Vol 26, Issue 19

by Carlton C. Stedman II

The situation you describe about the removable drives mounting in /media suggests it is using udev, hal, d-bus and ivman. Your home system should be using udev, but not sure if it has hal or d-bus; even if, doesn't sound like it has ivman. I'm not so sure about how to do this in FC, I'm a gentoo guy, but you'd need to have all of those installed and set up. This might be of some help: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_ivman. You need udev and d-bus for hal, and then just need to start the hal daemon (hald). Then start ivman, and it should autodetect devices plugged in and put them into /media. For example, /media/usbdisk0 would be the first partion of the first usb disk plugged in (I do believe). It'll add new devices to your /etc/fstab. You can, however, have a bit more control over this, setting up a udev rule to make your disk use a specific device file, for example /dev/mydrive and then put a listing in /etc/fstab to mount /dev/mydrive at /media/mydrive. Then, when plugged in, udev will create the /dev/mydrive device file and ivman will detect it's creation and readiness and mount it at /media/mydrive. Spiffy stuff. For more information on writing udev rules: http://gentoo-wiki.com/UDEV_Overview#Writing_custom_udev_rules. Bill Mills-Curran <bill(a)mills-curran.net> wrote... > Subject: [Wlug] usb drive -- hotplug/automount > To: Worcester Linux Users Group <wlug(a)wlug.org> > Message-ID: <20051227205055.GA6082(a)bday.mills.curran> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > I have a question about hotplugging & USB and some differences I see > between 2 different FC3 systems (home & work). > > **** Home > > Initially, I configured my drive at home. I did NOT have the menu > item: > > Preferences -> Removable Storage > > set to "Mount removable drives when hot-plugged". Without realizing > that this was an option, I used manual entries in fstab: > > # usb drive > LABEL=usblinux /mnt/usb/linux auto defaults,user 0 0 > /dev/sde2 /mnt/usb/windows auto defaults,user 0 0 > /dev/sde1 /mnt/usb/camera auto defaults,user 0 0 > > This worked well & good. I was happy to be able to mount the > partitions as a user. Note that the linux partition has a label > "usblinux". > > Then, I moved the drive to my work machine. > > **** Work > > I plugged the drive in and was surprised to find that both partitions > automatically mounted in /media: > > /media/usbdisk > /media/usblinux > > I also saw that entries were added to /etc/fstab, reflecting the mount > points and device names. > > I recognized this as better action. > > Returning home... > > **** Home > > Plugging the drive in, I confirmed that nothing was happening in > /media. I found the entry to automount the drive in: > > Preferences -> Removable Storage > > and enabled it. I unplugged and plugged the drive, and it mounted > with this from df: > > Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on > <snip> > /dev/sde1 72801276 1704196 67398920 3% /mnt/usb/camera > /dev/sde2 4176756 96 4176660 1% /mnt/usb/windows > > This is not what I wanted. It used my fstab entries, and it picked > the "camera" entry over the labeled entry. > > OK, so I deleted the fstab entries & tried again. This time nothing > mounted. > > **** What I'd like to happen. > > 1. Mount when plugged in. > > 2. Don't specify the device -- after all, some other (new) usb device > could disturb the device name. > > How do I get there? > > TIA, > Bill > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug > > > End of Wlug Digest, Vol 26, Issue 19 > ************************************ > -- Carlton C. Stedman II, sageman(a)wpi.edu "To iterate is human, to recurse, divine." -- L. Peter Deutch

Dec. 29, 2005