openSUSE 11.2 Release Notes

Copyright © 2009 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 file fdl.txt.

This is just the initial version of the release notes for openSUSE 11.2.

The release notes are under constant development. Download the newest version as part of the Internet test or refer to http://www.suse.com/relnotes/i386/openSUSE/11.2/RELEASE-NOTES.en.html.

These release notes cover the following areas:

Installation
  1. Configuring Boot Loader Location and Options
General
  1. openSUSE Documentation
  2. openSUSE Documentation as E-Books (EPUB)
  3. Starting the OpenSSH SSH Daemon (sshd)
  4. YaST and X.Org Configuration (Keyboard, Mouse, Graphics Board, and Monitor)
  5. KDE
  6. Thunderbird
Update
  1. System Upgrade with zypper
  2. Obsolete Kernel When Updating From DVD Medium
  3. Switching from syslog-ng to rsyslog
  4. New Samba Password Configuration Back-End: tdbsam
  5. MySQL 5.1
  6. Serial Devices Belonging to 'dialout' Group
Technical
  1. New Default Mount Option: relatime
  2. X.Org Keycode Changes Affects xmodmap Usage
  3. VMware Server v2

Installation

Configuring Boot Loader Location and Options

When setting the Boot Loader Location in the installation proposal, also set the Boot Loader Options. In the options adjust updates of the other system areas of your disk, which may influence the ability of openSUSE and the other installed systems to boot.

If the proposed boot loader configuration reports a warning, carefully review the boot loader configuration to avoid breaking the booting of other installed systems to ensure that openSUSE will boot.

General

openSUSE Documentation

openSUSE Documentation as E-Books (EPUB)

In addition to the traditional output formats PDF and HTML, the openSUSE system Documentation is now available as e-books in the EPUB format. EPUB (electronic publication) is a free and open e-book standard. For more information about EPUB, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB.

Download the EPUB files from http://en.opensuse.org/Documentation.

Starting the OpenSSH SSH Daemon (sshd)

The OpenSSH SSH daemon (sshd) is the daemon program for ssh. It is no longer started by default at system boot. If you want to access your computer with ssh, you must enable it as follows:

  1. Start YaST and open the runlevel editor (System > System Services (Runlevel)).

  2. In the YaST runlevel editor enable Expert Mode and select sshd.

  3. For example, enable it for runlevel 3 and 5. Then press Start and OK.

YaST and X.Org Configuration (Keyboard, Mouse, Graphics Board, and Monitor)

In the past, YaST offered an configuration interface for the graphical desktop (X.org) such as keyboard, mouse, graphics board, and monitor. During the installation a suitable xorg.conf was created.

In most cases it is no longer needed because the Xserver is now able to automatically configure the system. If it fails for your system, try the following steps:

  1. Check whether an old /etc/X11/xorg.conf file exists. If so, move it away and start your desktop again.

  2. If it still does not work, run sax2 from the command line and execute the configuration procedure.

  3. To adjust hardware components to your personal needs, start the GNOME desktop control center or Configure Desktop in KDE, and configure your devices such as the mouse or keyboard. The display configuration dialogs also let you configure multiple monitor setups. To configure multiple monitors, in other desktop environments, use xrandr.

For more information, see the Desktop User Guides shipping with openSUSE. They are also available from http://en.opensuse.org/Documentation

KDE

Thunderbird

With openSUSE 11.2 we ship Thunderbird 3.0 beta4, which will go final shortly after the 11.2 release.

If you still depend on add-ons, which are only available for Thunderbird 2.0, you can install this version from the mozilla buildservice repository at http://software.opensuse.org/ymp/mozilla:legacy/openSUSE_11.2/MozillaThunderbird.ymp. But note, Thunderbird 2.0 will be only supported for very short period of time, once version 3.0 is available.

Update

System Upgrade with zypper

If you update with zypper dup, packages might get restarted during the update process. It can happen that the restart does not succeed before you adjust the config files. This is especially critical if your system relies on services needed for downloading the update packages, e.g. a local proxy (squid) on the machine you update.

Set commit.downloadMode = DownloadInAdvance in /etc/zypp/zypp.conf so that everything is downloaded first, before the packages get installed. The download transaction needs a huge amount of space on the /var partition to store all the software packages.

Obsolete Kernel When Updating From DVD Medium

When updating to 11.2 from the DVD medium, the kernel-pae-base (or kernel-default-base) package is not removed. If you do a distribution upgrade with "zypper dup" from the online repository, it works fine. The workaround to resolve this issue is: In the package manager remove the kernel-pae-base package manually before executing the update installation. Proceed as follows:

In the "Update Overview" dialog, click "Packages". Go to the "Installation Overview" tab and select "Show packages with status [X] Keep". Then scroll down to the kernel-pae-base package and deactivate it.

Switching from syslog-ng to rsyslog

rsyslog is now the default tool to log system messages, replacing syslog-ng. You can still use syslog-ng, if you have a setup that relies on it.

New Samba Password Configuration Back-End: tdbsam

The new Samba password configuration back-end is tdbsam. Previous Samba packages shipped with openSUSE 11.1 and earlier were using smbpasswd as the default passdb backend. It was not explicitly set in the shipped /etc/samba/smb.conf configuration file. With this openSUSE release two changes are introduced:

If you have modified smb.conf on openSUSE 11.1 or earlier, the update process will install smb.conf.rpmnew and keep your old configuration.

Check in the old configuration file whether passdb backend was set. If not, there are two possibilities to get Samba running again:

We strongly recommend using the new default tdbsam. Only keep the old back-end if you have an absolute need. In this case, consider filing a bug report as suggested at http://en.openSUSE.org/Samba in the "Samba bug reporting and advanced debugging information" section.

Setting passdb backend = smbpasswd allows you to stay with the old configuration.

Keep in mind, the old tool provides a smaller feature set than the new default password configuration back-end tdbsam.

MySQL 5.1

MySQL version 5.1 is available. Some changes are not backward compatible. The most important are:

For more information, see http://en.opensuse.org/MySQL-5.1 and README.SuSE shipped with the MySQL package.

Serial Devices Belonging to 'dialout' Group

udev silently changed the group of serial devices from 'uucp' to 'dialout'. Users created on releases prior to openSUSE 11.2 were member of the 'dialout' group by default. After upgrading to 11.2 these users can directly access e.g., modems to issue dial commands. Administrators must review the 'dialout' group by checking /etc/group. To remove a user from this group use the following command (replace $USER with the actual user name):

groupmod -R $USER dialout

Technical

New Default Mount Option: relatime

The kernel by default mounts file systems now with the relatime option and thus updates inode access times relative to modify or change time. This is especially advantageous on desktop system.

If you want to keep the old behavior, set the strictatime option with the YaST partitioner or directly in /etc/fstab.

X.Org Keycode Changes Affects xmodmap Usage

Some X.Org keycodes have changed. Adjust your ~/.Xmodmap, if needed. Use xev to find out the new keycodes.

VMware Server v2

VMware Server v2 up through at least 2.0.2 build 203138 released 2009-10-27 only supports Linux kernels up to 2.6.27 and vmware-config.pl fails on kernel 2.6.31 used by openSuSE 11.2. For additional information, see http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/server_pubs.html and http://communities.vmware.com/message/1327112#1327112.