OpenSUSE 12.1 release notes

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Version:

12.1.9 (15-12-2011)

Copyright © 2011 Novell, Inc.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included as the fdl.txt file.

If you upgrade from an older version to this openSUSE release, see previous release notes listed here: http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Release_Notes

These release notes cover the following areas:

  • Miscellaneous: These entries are automatically included from openFATE, the Feature- and Requirements Management System (http://features.opensuse.org).
    For the moment, these snippets are listed unsorted—we are working on improvements.
  • Installation: Read this if you want to install the system from scratch.
  • General: Information that everybody should read.
  • System Upgrade: Issues related to the process if you run a system upgrade from the previous release to this openSUSE version.
  • Technical: This section contains a number of technical changes and enhancements for the experienced user.

Miscellaneous

YaST AppArmor Configuration Module

FATE Categories for https://features.opensuse.org/305278: AppArmor, YaST.

Find the AppArmor Configuration module now in the "Security and Users" section of the YaST Control Center.

Installation

For Detailed Installation Information

For detailed installation information, see the "openSUSE Documentation" referenced below.

General

openSUSE Documentation

  • In Start-Up, find step-by-step installation instructions, as well as introductions to the KDE and Gnome desktops and to the LibreOffice suite. Also covered are basic administration topics such as deployment and software management and an introduction to the bash shell.
  • Reference covers administration, and system configuration in detail and explains how to set up various network services.
  • The Security Guide introduces basic concepts of system security, covering both local and network security aspects.
  • The System Analysis and Tuning Guide helps with problem detection, resolution and optimization.
  • Virtualization with KVM offers an introduction to setting up and managing virtualization with KVM, libvirt and QEMU tools.

GNOME 3

GNOME 3 offers a new design for the desktop that is different from GNOME 2. As a result, and in order to have users benefit from the changes, the look and feel of your GNOME 2 desktop will not be migrated automatically. The System Settings can be used to customize GNOME 3, and an advanced tool (gnome-tweak-tool) is provided for more detailed customization.

The standard mode of GNOME 3 requires support for 3D acceleration in the graphic drivers. When 3D acceleration is not available, GNOME 3 then uses the fallback mode. If it turns out that GNOME 3 detects availability of 3D acceleration, but the standard mode is unusable, then you likely hit a bug in the graphic drivers. You can force the fallback mode with the "gnome.fallback=1" argument on the boot line in grub.

If you use the fallback mode, you can customize the panels by pressing Alt when right-clicking on a panel.

For a brief description of many GNOME Shell features, such as keybindings, drag and drop capabilities, and special utilities, see https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet.

PulseAudio Sound System

The PulseAudio sound system is now system-wide integrated and enabled by default for new installation. If you disabled it on a previous release, and want to enable it now, check the PULSEAUDIO_ENABLE variable in /etc/sysconfig/sound:

Set PULSEAUDIO_ENABLE to "yes" to forcefully enable PA everywhere. Setting PULSEAUDIO_ENABLE to "no" will disable PulseAudio completely, and setting it to "custom" means to keep a custom configuration untouched.

Btrfs

Btrfs is the next generation filesystem for Linux. As a preview of the new technology, you can create btrfs partitions or setup your whole system with btrfs.

Note: The btrfs filesystem is in active development, and check and repair functionality ("scrub") has been added just recently. "Scrub" is aimed to verify data and metadata assuming the tree structures are fine; it can (and should) be run periodically on a mounted filesystem: it runs as a background process during normal operation.

Thus we advice to carefully consider, which data to put on the filesystem, and follow the usual suggestions for redundancy and backup. For more information, see http://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org.

Btrfs contains many interesting new features, including the ability to take snapshots of your filesystem. Snapshot and rollback is supported by snapper, and already integrated into openSUSE package and system management tools such as zypper and YaST.

Windows Domain Logon with KDM

The SUSE KDM theme does not allow Windows Domain logons.

To work around this issue, set DISPLAYMANAGER_KDM_THEME to an empty string in /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager to use the default KDM theme: 

 DISPLAYMANAGER_KDM_THEME=""

Oracle Java Externally Available

The java-1_6_0-sun package is not anymore part of openSUSE due to a license change. We ship the OpenJDK build as a replacement. openSUSE users who prefer to use the Oracle JDK binary version over the openSUSE OpenJDK build, can download the Oracle version from http://oracle.com/java.

System Upgrade

Mounting Encrypted Partitions with systemd

If encrypted partitions are not automatically mounted with systemd, the noauto flag in /etc/fstab for these partitions could be the cause. Replacing this flag with nofail will fix it. For instance, change the following line: 

 /dev/mapper/cr_sda3  /home   ext4    acl,user_xattr,noauto 0 2

to 

 /dev/mapper/cr_sda3  /home   ext4    acl,user_xattr,nofail 0 2

Technical

Initializing Graphics with KMS (Kernel Mode Setting)

With openSUSE 11.3 we switched to KMS (Kernel Mode Setting) for Intel, ATI and NVIDIA graphics, which now is our default. If you encounter problems with the KMS driver support (intel, radeon, nouveau), disable KMS by adding nomodeset to the kernel boot command line. To set this permanently, add it to the kernel command line in /boot/grub/menu.lst. This option makes sure the appropriate kernel module (intel, radeon, nouveau) is loaded with modeset=0 in initrd, i.e. KMS is disabled.

In the rare cases when loading the DRM module from initrd is a general problem and unrelated to KMS, it is even possible to disable loading of the DRM module in initrd completely. For this set the NO_KMS_IN_INITRD sysconfig variable to yes via YAST, which then recreates initrd afterwards. Reboot your machine.

On Intel without KMS the Xserver falls back to the fbdev driver (the intel driver only supports KMS); alternatively, for legacy GPUs from Intel the "intellegacy" driver (xorg-x11-driver-video-intel-legacy package) is available, which still supports UMS (User Mode Setting). To use it, edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf and change the driver entry to intellegacy.

On ATI for current GPUs it falls back to radeonhd. On NVIDIA without KMS the nv driver is used (the nouveau driver supports only KMS). Note, newer ATI and NVIDIA GPUs are falling back to fbdev, if you specify the nomodeset kernel boot parameter.

Radeon HDMI Sound Output Being Disabled

Due to problems on some hardware HDMI sound output has been disabled by default on the radeon driver, which is the default driver for AMD/ATI graphics cards.

It can be re-enabled by adding radeon.audio=1 as a kernel parameter. In YaST, go to System -> Boot Loader, then click Edit on the default entry, and add the following to the end of 'Optional Kernel Command Line Parameter': 

 radeon.audio=1

Then reboot to apply the change.

Alternatively, users can install the proprietary driver from AMD. For more information, see http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:ATI_drivers.

Booting with systemd or sysvinit

By default, openSUSE now boots using systemd. In case of trouble, you can switch back to the old way using sysvinit by pressing the F5 key on the boot.

If you want to switch to sysvinit permanently, install the sysvinit-init package. To switch back to systemd, reinstall the systemd-sysvinit package.

systemd: Supplying Service Start-up Parameters

systemctl only supports "standard" parameters (see http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/Incompatibilities).

You can bypass this new behavior by calling the start-up script directly, for example: 

 cd /etc/init.d
 ./apache2 <your_parameters>

systemd: System Shutdown

To halt and poweroff the system when using systemd, issue halt -p or shutdown -h now on the command-line or use the shutdown button provided by your desktop environment.

Note: A plain halt will not shutdown the system properly.

systemd: Making Use of tmpfs: /run, /var/run, /media, etc.

systemd mounts several directories that are meant to contain volatile data only, as tmpfs filesystems: /run, /var/run, /var/lock, and /media are those directories. For background information, see http://lwn.net/Articles/436012/.

Note: Do not store files that are meant to survive a reboot, in /run, /var/run, etc.

systemd: Cleaning Directories (/tmp and /var/tmp)

systemd maintains directories as specified in the tmpfiles.d directories and in /lib/systemd/system/systemd-tmpfiles-clean.timer. For more information, see the tmpfiles.d manpage.

By default, systemd cleans tmp directories daily as configured in /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf: 

 d /tmp 1777 root root 10d
 d /var/tmp 1777 root root 30d

Note: systemd does not honor sysconfig variables in /etc/sysconfig/cron such as TMP_DIRS_TO_CLEAR.

CUPS 1.5

CUPS 1.5 comes with backward incompatible changes:

  • CUPS no longer supports the ~/.cupsrc or ~/.lpoptions configuration files from CUPS 1.1. Instead use ~/.cups/client.conf and ~/.cups/lpoptions that were introduced with CUPS 1.2.
  • The scheduler now requires that filters and backends have group write permissions disabled for improved security. If you use third party printer drivers from manufacturers with relaxed file permissions, adjust the permissions manually.

The rename Command

According to the GNU Coding Standards, the rename command now treats all strings beginning with a dash as a command line option. To prevent this, separate the option from the other arguments with -- as follows: 

 #!/bin/bash\\
 for f in *.jpg ; do\\
   rename -- ".jpg" "-$RANDOM.jpg" $f ;\\
 done

NetworkManager Command Line Interface

cnetworkmanager is no longer available—use nmcli instead. For migration information, see http://repo.or.cz/w/cnetworkmanager.git/blob_plain/HEAD:/nmcli-migration.html.

rpm: %_topdir Changed for Non-root Users

Unprivileged users can no longer write to /usr/src/packages. rpmbuild now uses ~/rpmbuild by default. To change the directory add a line as follows to ~/.rpmmacros: 

 %_topdir /some/where/else

To use the subdirectory foo of $HOME add to ~/.rpmmacros: 

 %_topdir %{getenv:HOME}/foo
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