Alexey Solofnenko blog

My mother called telling that my photo server is not available any more. It looks like one of versions of mythweb broke my web server. Apache stopped running with error that "setenv" is not a valid command mythweb.conf file. After removing the package, Apache is working fine. I wonder what other unused junk should I remove...

I have given a friend a CD with OpenSuSE 10.3 GNOME and warned her to unselect option to use online repositories. She had to back few files from the computer up, so I left her to do the work. She backed everything up, booted from the CD, used default settings, installed default packages, ... and after reboot the system said - "No system on drive". I have never seen it after Linux installation. I do not understand, how it is possible. There is a single hard drive - no chance to screw the system up. Unless... Compaq liked putting a service partition on the hard drive and maybe Linux installer removed it and the computer cannot boot any more. Or maybe the CD was not good - this was the third attempt to burn it and there were problems with the first two. I will try reinstalling the system with the second CD - only one unessential RPM could not be validated on it. I hope it will fix the problem. So much for "easy Linux installation". People noticed that software is just afraid of me to misbehave - bugs disappear when I come to watch them happening.

The fan on my server became too loud and I decided to move the computer out of my bedroom into living room. It is now standing in the corner behind all furniture with just ethernet cable attached. I login into it with NX client from my laptop anyway, so it does not have to be anywhere close. At first I even thought to put it into garage, but it is really hot in Summer and it can be humid during rain in Winter.

I needed a replacement terminal machine for my wife and children that does not have to be running at night. I found an old XP PIII-850 computer in the closet. After loading few times to see if hardware was still okay and not a moment before XP decided to install its myriads updates (I decided not to abort the updates, because I might need working OS for final checkups). Incidentally, it had 250GB hard drive, best in my home AGP MX400, but only a CD drive. I had to take DVD ROM and CDRW drives from my other very old Linux PC and free space by removing disconnected 20GB drive that was still inside. BIOS noticed hardware changes and XP booted just fine. Now it was time for backing up interesting files. It took 3 hours on 100Mb line at ~80% utilization to copy them. During that time I downloaded and burned new SuSE 10.2 RC1 DVD. For some reason k3b complained again that my DVD writer had invalid permission. I guess something resets the permissions every time I reboot. Everything was prepared and I was watching TV while checking blinking lights on the ethernet switch in my living room (there were TiVO and networked media player already, so I put a switch there - wireless network is not reliable enough). Then the blinking stopped and the installation began.

With new SuSE I decided to experiment even more - install ext3 and Gnome desktop. It took another hour to copy files. During that time I learned by watching TV how some things are made (the most interesting part was about wine). Then I got the first problem - even though the network card worked, the network test failed, but YAST decided to perform online update. After downloading many files for languages I never understood it showed an error about two of them and stopped. UI was still working but buttons did nothing, so I pressed Ctrl-Backspace and Linux booted. At first everything seemed okay, but installer skipped hardware configuration, so nothing besides video and network worked (later I learned that video configuration was broken too). I started manually installing hardware and then went to sleep. Next day computer could not start X11 at all.

It was a set back, but I was used to it. Living an a burning edge teaches the patience. The patience I did not have, so I just reinstalled the system skipping network test and online update and selecting KDE as my primary desktop. This time everything worked perfectly. Even welcome screen was installed correctly with all necessary options including remote login. I guess it was described somewhere about this release pitfalls, but who reads documentation... Definitely not me - I just "google".

Everything is fine now - server lets me sleep, there is a working terminal workstation and I installed all games installer could find for the children.

It looks like it lost it online update configuration. After I reregistered it, YOU started to work again. As usual, it slowsly initializes, but unlike before it does find security updates.

Now it is official YOU cannot find security updates. I should have said it cannot find security updates on my computer. Long time ago I read somewhere that YOU stops working after non-SuSE repositories are added. Maybe I will spend time to figure the cause out, but Smart works fine, so it is not urgent. I wonder why SuSE needed its own package management tool - there are now many cool tools that work.

Just after I saw gzip security advisory I launched Smart and it found the update. I did not even have a chance to try updated YOU. I wonder, if it was fixed in the last update. I am sure there will be more security updates to try it on.

After YOU not founding any security updates I got nervous and and tried to install yum. Yum found few things to update, but eventually got jammed on libofx.so.2. Now I understand why - some obsolete packages still required it, but new updates required newer version. Instead of "yum update" I should had put "yum upgrade", but it is too late. Google offered a solution - installing Smart do update with it. As an act of extreme cruelty, I used yum to install its replacement. Smart was actually smart - it detected all update channels, including SuSE channels, found all recent security updates and installed them. It also updated SuSE rug, zypp, YAST, even though they could not update themselves. Next time I will see, if YOU will be able to install new security fixes now. Smart also has a nice GUI and it seems much faster loading local repository caches. Way to go, smart! It a package manager of choice on my system for now... until I find something wrong with it too.

Many people do not understand that without DRM Linux will loose customers. Fortunately they are not talking about all movies and books any more. Now FSF talks only about content under GPL (non GPL content can use DRM). They are trying to fight DRM by making it meaningless - they want all keys to be able to make DRM think that the modified content is legit. While the idea of running custom software on Tivo and other hardware seems good (especially after original manufactures loose interest in that hardware), requiring publishing to secret keys is overkill. A simple solution can be offered - manufactures should provide a way to disable DRM restrictions on their hardware for free, but with possible warranty and support cancellation.

My old laptop is up for a beating again. After some time with SuSE 9 and 10, I installed SLED 10 trial on it. Unlike normal SuSE you have to buy SLED to get updates. It is usually not a problem unless you are running publicly available services and update your browsers yourself. SuSE switched to GNOME and the switch brought some new changes. I guess they could make KDE work the same, but decided to go with GNOME. Also unlike normal SuSE there seems less packages available in SLED.

SLED desktop seems windowish. SuSE "start" menu looks like one from Windows. Unlike Windows it does not show all applications by default, but a list of favorite applications. It seems really useful feature - going through a big list of menus in SuSE 10 is not fun. My feeling that all SLED improvements are for novices. With SuSE 10 I just created a toolbar with applications that I usually launch. I will not wait until trial expires. I already downloaded 10.2 alpha 2 disks. The worst problem with it is that I will have to use text mode installer. I can live with it.

Living behind a hardware firewall gives some feeling of safety. Unfortunately I am publishing more and more internal services to the world. While Apache is one one of the most secure web servers, because it is open source, everybody knows about its problems right after they are published. This is why it is very important to always keep it up-to-date. For some reason, automatic update did not kick in (I think SuSE is still polishing its new software management system). After I launched Yast Online Update, it found few new patches. It updated itself, then found even more. Eventually it applied all but one patch (for rug). That patch is tricky. For some reason it cannot be downloaded (bad timing?), but even it is not downloaded it is causing YOU to restart, because it is a part of update system. I think this is the problem. I will try to update it tomorrow. In the worst case, I will download and install it manually.