Suse & OpenSuse Tips » admin

Installing SysBench on OpenSuSE 11.3

admin — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 09:33:05 +0000

SysBench is a system performance benchmark that is available on sourceforge.net. You can download it from sysbench.sourceforge.net and currently on version 0.4.12. It is currently not in the OpenSuSE nor SuSE software repository and you will have to download the sources and build it.

The main objective of SysBench was for evaluating the Operating System’s parameters that are considered important for a system that is running a database. It is designed to be modular, cross platform and is a multi-threaded application. The benchmarks includes:

File I/O performance
Operating Systems scheduler performance
Memory allocation and transfer speed
POSIX threads implementation performance
Database server performance (OLTP benchmark)

It comes well documented for the installation but on debian based systems (and OpenSuSE), you will need to edit a parameter in configure.ac the file. I am really not sure why they don’t just have an automatic detection of the OS distribution and select the right parameters. Anyway, after you download it, you can untar it using tar –xvzf sysbench-0.4.12.tar.gz. Then follow the instructions below;

Edit configure.ac and replace the LIBTOOL with RANLIB
Run ./autogen.sh
Run ./configure –without-mysql (This is because my machine doesn’t have MySQL installed)
Run make
Run sudo make install

There, you are done!

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Installing SysBench on OpenSuSE 11.3

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Novell Agrees to be Acquired by Attachmate Corporation

admin — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 14:56:52 +0000

WALTHAM, Mass., 22 Nov 2010: Novell, Inc. (NASDAQ: NOVL), the leader in intelligent workload management, today announced that it has entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Attachmate Corporation would acquire Novell for $6.10 per share in cash in a transaction valued at approximately $2.2 billion. Attachmate Corporation is owned by an investment group led by Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital and Thoma Bravo. Novell also announced it has entered into a definitive agreement for the concurrent sale of certain intellectual property assets to CPTN Holdings LLC, a consortium of technology companies organized by Microsoft Corporation, for $450 million in cash, which cash payment is reflected in the merger consideration to be paid by Attachmate Corporation.

The $6.10 per share consideration represents a premium of 28% to Novell’s closing share price on March 2, 2010, the last trading day prior to the public disclosure of Elliott Associates, L.P.’s proposal to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Novell for $5.75 per share and a 9% premium to Novell’s closing stock price on November 19, 2010.

"After a thorough review of a broad range of alternatives to enhance stockholder value, our Board of Directors concluded that the best available alternative was the combination of a merger with Attachmate Corporation and a sale of certain intellectual property assets to the consortium," said Ron Hovsepian, president and CEO of Novell. "We are pleased that these transactions appropriately recognize the value of Novell’s relationships, technology and solutions, while providing our stockholders with an attractive cash premium for their investment."

Mr. Hovsepian continued, "We also believe the transaction with Attachmate Corporation will deliver important benefits to Novell’s customers, partners and employees by providing opportunities for building on Novell’s brands, innovation and market leadership."

"We are very excited about this transaction as it greatly complements our existing portfolio," said Jeff Hawn, chairman and CEO of Attachmate Corporation. "Novell has an established record of innovation, impressive technology and brand assets, and a leading ecosystem of partnerships and talented employees. The addition of Novell to our Attachmate and NetIQ businesses will enhance the spectrum of solutions we can offer to customers. We fully support Novell’s commitment to its customers and we look forward to continuing to invest for the benefit of Novell’s customers and partners."

Attachmate Corporation plans to operate Novell as two business units: Novell and SUSE; and will join them with its other holdings, Attachmate and NetIQ.

Attachmate Corporation’s acquisition of Novell is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals and clearance under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, and is also conditioned upon the closing of the proposed sale of certain intellectual property assets to CPTN Holdings LLC. In addition, the transaction is subject to approval by Novell’s stockholders. The sale of the intellectual property assets to the consortium is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals and clearance under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, and is also conditioned upon the closing of the merger with Attachmate Corporation. Novell currently expects these transactions to close in the first quarter of 2011.

J.P. Morgan is serving as financial advisor and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP is acting as legal advisor to Novell. Credit Suisse and RBC Capital Markets are serving as financial advisors and Jones Day is acting as legal advisor to Attachmate Corporation. [via]

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Novell Agrees to be Acquired by Attachmate Corporation

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Beginners Guide to Compiling Kernel on OpenSuSE 11.3

admin — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 07:51:24 +0000

Often, we move from a laboratory to another or from an organization to another, we are task with making changes to the Linux system’s kernel. One thing to note is that each Linux distribution has a different “recommended” method for making changes. Here, I will document a quick and easy method to compiling the kernel on OpenSuSE 11.3.

Firstly, you will need the development tools, such as gcc and also the Linux sources. You can use the YaST Software Management to install the necessary. For my OpenSuSE 11.3 system, the kernel sources are for version 2.6.34-12.

As superuser (root), go to /usr/src/linux. You can skip the make menuconfig if you just want to try it out. But it would be a good idea to enter it and change the kernel name (in case it messes it up!) Next, make a distributable rpm.

# make rpm

This will take some time depending on your config. This process is also smart enough to use up all my 4 cores on my machine for the compilation. Assuming that you have a 32-bit x86 machine (like me);

# cd /usr/src/packages/RPMS/i386

Install the newly created rpm (I renamed mine to have a test extension) using;

# zypper install kernel-2.6.34test-1.i386.rpm

Ok, all done … not quite. For those who are slightly more experienced, you will immediately ask what about the initrd file?

# cd /boot
# make initrd

That’s it … oh, you need to edit your GRUB boot file.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Beginners Guide to Compiling Kernel on OpenSuSE 11.3

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Installing Google Chromium on OpenSuSE 11.3

admin — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 06:14:38 +0000

If you are a fan of Google’s Chrome web browser, you can get their Open Source version called Chromium for OpenSuSE 11.3. Although there is a Chrome Beta version, some prefer the Chromium version due to it being Open Source!

Firstly, you can download it from http://en.opensuse.org/Chromium and once downloaded, simply run

sudo rpm –ivh Download/chromium-7.0.528.0-29.3.i586.rpm

It should install in a few seconds and off you go!

Have fun! (Note, if you use the Google Chrome Beta version, you would likely have some dependencies requirements which you need to resolve).

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Installing Google Chromium on OpenSuSE 11.3

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

MeeGo v1.0: Preview to SuSE MeeGo

admin — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 17:55:24 +0000

This is kinda old news since it was announced late last year that Novell will support Moblin and being the lead developer of Moblin for netbooks, they have obviously also adopted the merged effort by Nokia and Intel (Maemo and Moblin) resulting in MeeGo.

Having just installed it on my Acer AspireOne, I must say that it works like a dream! Even sound and my built-in webcam works! Installation was one of the cleanest and almost effortless. Once installed, you will be greeted with a pleasant and colourful screen.

I haven’t had time to try it out extensively but from first impressions, it works well, it is quite fast, there is a version that comes with Google’s Chrome web browser and it is basically a MID (Mobile Internet Device).

However, my flash within the google chrome did crash and there are times when the response from MeeGo was slower than acceptable (but that’s still better than other OSes I ran on that netbook), there’s no OpenOffice but I guess it is not for office productivity (however, a viewer may be handy, haven’t tried it out yet although there’s a useable PDF viewer). Overall, I believe this is a great effort and with this initial version of MeeGo out, I would like to see what Novell will offer in their “SuSE MeeGo” version … Microsoft integration?

Oh, I think there’s no “shutdown” button, just press the physical on button on the netbook. It really does make things simpler.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

MeeGo v1.0: Preview to SuSE MeeGo

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Simple Image Editing in OpenSuSE: GraphicsMagick

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 03:38:47 +0000

Personal multimedia content such as images and videos seem to be taking up most of our disk space and hence the ever increasing amount of Gigabytes and soon to be Terabytes on our desktop. Having OpenSuSE as your main desktop environment would also mean that in addition to having Office Productivity, Instant Messaging and Web Browsers, you would probably be looking for a simple to use image editing tool; if I may say, something like MS-Paint on Windows!

OpenSuSE always had GIMP, which is a very powerful tool and is targeted as an alternative to Adobe Photoshop. GraphicMagick is a simple to use tool that is small in size and is able to support most common image formats such as GIF, JPEG, PNG and TIFF. Some of the functions include resize, rotate, sharpen, colour reduction and some image effects and even create a composite of image from combining several images. HOWEVER, it has a very and I repeat, very primitive look and feel to it! But it works.

There is also a version that runs on Windows.

Installation of GraphicsMagick

You can use YaSt –> Software Management and search for the GraphicsMagick. It is a package under the OpenSuSE repository. Search for “GraphicsMagick” and it will show up in your YaST Software Management

Click on “Install” and then “Apply”. After installation, it somehow does not show up in your list of applications. Run a terminal session and type in “gm display” for the graphical interface.

Didn’t I say it was primitive! It works well for simple editing such as sharpening, viewing at the image histogram, saturation and so on. Give it a try, the interface may not be your cup of tea but maybe it is …

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Simple Image Editing in OpenSuSE: GraphicsMagick

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

How to install VirtualBox Guest Additions in OpenSuse 11.2

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 05:41:46 +0000

VirtualBox Guest Additions allows users to get some excellent features like "seamless mouse integration", shared folder access etc, between my host (Windows 7) and guest (OpenSuse 11.2), and increase the screen resolution from 800 X 600 to 1024×768. Besides that, the Guest Additions also improve its performance and cooperation with the rest of the Product.

In order to install Virtual Box Guest Additions, firstly you should mount the VBoxGuestAdditions.iso from within the VirtualBox window. From the menu bar, go to Devices > CD/DVD Devices and select VBoxGuestAdditions.iso.

Next, you will be presented a Window asking whether you want to run the software automatically. Click Run.

Then, you will see the VBoxAdditions_3 icon displayed on your desktop.

In order to install VirtualBox Guest Additions, you got to be in the Root mode. In the console, type “su –“ followed by the administrator password. Then navigate to the media folder and type

“./ VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run install”

This should install the VirtualBox Guest Additions. In order for it to take effect, restart the openSUSE guest OS. You may notice right away after you restarted, your screen resolution has increased to 1024 X 768.

You can download VirtualBox from here.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

How to install VirtualBox Guest Additions in OpenSuse 11.2

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

OpenSUSE 11.3 hits second milestone, now features KDE 4.4 Desktop

admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 02:12:43 +0000

OpenSuse project has released the latest milestone – Milestone 2 of its OpenSuse 11.3 which features Linux 2.6.33 and also the new KDE 4.4 Desktop. This new KDE desktop introduces a new netbook interface, native window tabbing and the KAuth authentication Framework, among other improvements and new applications.

KDE 4.4’s Plasma Desktop

Besides that, there are also updates to NetworkManager, ModemManager and other network related plug-ins which do not add features, but support more hardware and include bug fixes. Other updated packages include DigiKam, evolution, Mono, GnuTLS and libgphoto2. Developers will also find Bootchart 2.0.0.9, a tool for analysing slow system booting, included.

As per DesktopLinux:

The Novell-sponsored OpenSUSE project released Milestone 2 of its OpenSUSE 11.3, featuring Linux 2.6.33, GNOME 2.3 beta, and a new network security stack. OpenSUSE 11.3 Milestone 2 also debuts the new KDE 4.4 desktop, which adds a netbook interface, plus new tabbing and social networking features.

The OpenSUSE project, which acts as the community upstream source for Novell’s SUSE Linux, released Milestone 1 of version 11.3 in late January. OpenSUSE 11.3, which is scheduled for final release in July, offers upgraded versions of open source software including Linux 2.6.33, OpenOffice 3.2 Beta4, VirtualBox 3.1 beta 1, and Mono 2.6.

The release also includes the major new 4.4 release of the KDE desktop (see farther below), as well as the 2.30 beta 1 of the GNOME desktop. Live CDs with either environment are now said to be available. Plans for the upcoming Milestone 3, meanwhile, include the switch to GCC 4.5.0 as the default compiler, says the OpenSUSE project.

To learn more about testing openSUSE, visit the Testing pages on the openSUSE wiki.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

OpenSUSE 11.3 hits second milestone, now features KDE 4.4 Desktop

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

How to install GNOME desktop environment theme in OpenSuse 11.1

admin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:43:01 +0000

Linux desktops in general offers users the capabilities to customize the operating system to meet any particular preferences. The OpenSUSE implementation of the GNOME desktop environment is no exception to this rule.

The theme of a desktop defines how various aspects of the desktop appear such as Controls, Window Borders, Colors, Icons and Pointers. In order to change the GNOME desktop environment theme, Theme settings are configured from the Appearance Preferences screen accessed from the Computer->Control Center->Appearance option.

If you would like to download and install other themes via the Internet, a wide range of themes are available for download from http://art.gnome.org/themes.

The new theme can be installed one of two ways.

Either click and drag the theme package from the desktop to the Appearance Preferences dialog to add the theme,
or click on the Install… button in Appearance Preferences and navigate to the location where the theme is installed.

Once the theme has been added you will be asked if you wish to apply the new theme to the current desktop. Good luck trying it out!

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

How to install GNOME desktop environment theme in OpenSuse 11.1

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

How to install Gnome/KDE Desktop Environment on OpenSuse 11

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 09:39:00 +0000

If you using OpenSuse and would like to switch from GNOME Desktop environment to KDE Desktop environment or vice versa, then this is a simple blog post for you.

In general, you can install GNOME/KDE Desktop Environment during installing of OpenSuse or after installation of OpenSuse. You can also switch from one desktop environment to another desktop environment easily.

During Installation :
During installation process for OpenSuse, you can select which desktop environment you want as your default, or which one will automatically load when you log into OpenSUSE 11.0, at the "Desktop Selection" section. Continue through the installation and you will come to a section called "Installation Overview" (check the left column for this heading). On this screen, you will see all of the hardware, settings, configurations and software that is about to be installed (since it is the last step before installation). Click on the "Change…" button and the software packages will load. Once they load, scroll down in the left column until you find the heading "Graphical Environments." Once you get there, check the following 2 packages:

To install Gnome:

GNOME Base System
GNOME Desktop Environment

To install KDE3:

KDE3 Base System
KDE3 Desktop Environment

To install KDE4:

KDE4 Base System
KDE4 Desktop Environment

Once you have checked them, click "OK" and finish the installation.

After Installation

The other method is after you have installed OpenSUSE 11.0. In order to install a new desktop environment, open YaST Package Manager, either by going into YaST (enter root password), go the "Software" section and then select "Software Management" or through the terminal by issuing the command: su, enter the root password, and then issuing the command: yast2 –install. Once you have YaST Package Manager open, the repositories will refresh. Once they finish, click the dropdown menu in the bottom-left of the window labeled: "Groups." Select "Patterns" instead and wait for the left column to refresh. Now, scroll down in left menu until you find the heading "Graphical Environments," select the following packages, and then press "Install All":

To install Gnome:

GNOME Base System
GNOME Desktop Environment

To install KDE3:

KDE3 Base System
KDE3 Desktop Environment

To install KDE4:

KDE4 Base System
KDE4 Desktop Environment

Switching Between Environments
Switching between desktop environments is fairly easy. For example, if you would like to switch GNOME to KDE, before you login, you will see a link in the bottom-left of the screen labeled: "Sessions." Click this, and a prompt will appear. Select the desktop environment you want to boot into and then enter your username and password. Once you do this, you will be asked if you want to make this session the default session: this means that if you make this session the default (weather you selected Gnome or KDE), that desktop environment will automatically load when you login, rather than having to into the session prompt and selecting it.

If you set OpenSUSE 11.0 to automatically log you in when it boots, this option will not appear. To disable the auto-login, open YaST and enter the root password in the prompt. Find the heading: "Security and Users" (you can jump to this heading by clicking the link the left column with the name "Security and Users"). Once the window loads, you will see the users on your OpenSUSE system. Click the dropdown labeled "Expert Options" and select the "Login Settings." In this new window, uncheck "Auto Login" (you can also uncheck "Passwordless Logins" if you want OpenSUSE 11.0 to prompt you for your password when you enter your username; this is suggested for security reasons, so if it is checked, it is suggested that you uncheck it) and then press the "OK" button. Now, click the "Finish" button in the bottom-right. Now, when you boot your OpenSUSE 11.0 system, you will be prompted to enter your username and password (if you unchecked "Passwordless Logins" in the Expert User option window [see middle of the paragraph]) and you can click the "Sessions" link to change your desktop environment. [via]

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

How to install Gnome/KDE Desktop Environment on OpenSuse 11

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

How to run Windows software on OpenSuse

admin — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:12:00 +0000

Wine is a free software application that aims to allow Unix-like computer operating systems to execute programs written for Microsoft Windows.

Installation

To install Wine in OpenSuse, go to Yast software search for wine and install it. You can also install Wine from the terminal as su type zypper in wine. If you want to get the latest updates you need to add the wine repository here

General setup up
For general setup of Wine, firstly you need to install wine. You may refer to the post above. Once it is installed press Allt+F2 and enter winecfg in the text field (you can do the same by entering it in a console)

The first window shows the general settings. In the versions field
select Windows XP if it is not already selected Under about enter your name, you can leave the organization field empty if you want. You can enter your initials.
Set the sounds settings so that only AlSA is selected
In the Application tab you can add the applications you often use and set the default windows version for this i use "global settings" but feel free to experiment.
You can also add custom paths in the Desktop integration tab

Installing Programs with wine
Installing programs with wine is almost exactly the same as in windows. You just click on the installer .exe file. The first time you do this it is a good idea to right click and choose other enter wine in the field and check remember application choice. Quite often you will not be able to run the latest version with wine. For example the latest version of Photoshop is CS4 but wine will only run up to CS2. [via]

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

How to run Windows software on OpenSuse

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

OpenSuse 11.2 is ready for release

admin — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 12:13:49 +0000

The much anticipated OpenSUSE 11.2 is scheduled for the final release in November. The last milestone for OpenSUSE was the OpenSUSE 11.2 Milestone 8 (M8) which features numerous bug fixes, Linux kernel 2.6.31, improved partioning, social networking clients, and new versions of packages including GNOME 2.28, says the project.

OpenSUSE which was launched in 2005 by Novell as a community version of SUSE Linux, had its last major release in June 2008 with version 11.0, which was issued in final form in June 2008. Version 11.0 featured 200 new features, a redesigned installer, KDE 4.0, GNOME 2.2.2, and the Compiz Fusion 3D window manager.

OpenSUSE 11.2 offers partitioning and filesystems enhancements, as well as the coronation of ext4 as the default file system, and early support for the Btrfs filesystem. Other OpenSUSE improvements include interface enhancements to the YaST partioner interface, improved package management and mirror handling, and Zypper command line enhancements. Besides that, OpenSUSE 11.2 also offers improved social networking clients, with GNOME’s Gwibber supporting Facebook, Twitter and Identi.ca., and KDE’s Choqok client supporting Twitter and Identi.ca.

OpenSUSE 11.2 Milestone 8 is available to download for 32 and 64 bit x86 systems as a DVD or LiveCD image, here, with the final release expected in November 2009.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

OpenSuse 11.2 is ready for release

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Opensuse 11.1 KDE4 Reloaded

admin — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 03:47:25 +0000

OpenSUSE 11.2 will be released in two months, however the recently released of OpenSUSE 11.1 KDE4 Reloaded images allows us to have a good preview of the upcoming 11.2 version.

openSUSE 11.1 KDE4 Reloaded includes KDE 4.3.1, Firefox 3.5 and all the online updates which have been released for openSUSE 11.1. Also included are applications like Amarok, Digikam, KNetworkManager & the new Qt4-based YaST Control Center. Other additional applications are like Choqok, Kompare, Marble & Okteta could be added with a new and more efficient compression algorithm.

These installable Live-CDs are useful for people who want to test out KDE 4.3 and users who are doing new installs and want the most recent openSUSE updates straight out of the box, saving a lot of installation time. New in this version is that the images can be also dumped to a USB stick and booted from there.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Opensuse 11.1 KDE4 Reloaded

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Installing HP LaserJet 1020 Printer for OpenSuSE

admin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 03:41:07 +0000

Printers such as the HP LaserJet 1020 (1000, 1005, 1018, 1022 inclusive) are usually detected by the various Linux distribution. However, there seem to have little success in ensuring that the printer drivers installed works.

Luckily for us, there is a driver that works very well with OpenSuSE (I have also tried it with Ubuntu and SuSE Enterprise) and it can be found here.

Installing has never failed for me and the steps are basically (detailed instructions can be found at that site),

Download it
Untar it
make
sudo make install
sudo make install-hotplug
make cups
yast2 printer

It has been working for me each time I install a new PC/Server with SuSE or OpenSuSE. Great tool and please do donate to their effort.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Installing HP LaserJet 1020 Printer for OpenSuSE

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

How to start services automatically at boot?

admin — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:56:28 +0000

In the traditional sense, when we want to include a new service at boot time, we looked into the /etc/init.d/ directory and figure out where to put it. (I tend to look and figure it out as it changes over the years).

In many other distribution, they provide various ways to do this and to ensure that it is correctly configured. In SuSE and OpenSuSE, they provided the command insserv for this purpose.

# insserv –r hwscan

If you would like to stop the scanning of hardware configuration at boot time. Normally, this is turned on but when you have the server configured and running optimally, you may want to disable it to ensure a faster boot up time. To start it again at boot up time, just

# insserv hwscan

Of course, YAST also provide this, go to YaST Control Center –> System –> System Services (Runlevel).

Where you can enable/disable the services.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

How to start services automatically at boot?

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Differential backup script sample

admin — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:01:22 +0000

We should regularly backup our servers (and PCs and notebooks) and if you are running a production server, backing up as regularly as possible should be considered. However, backing corporate servers which are full of emails or shared documents can take hours. We can probably only do so on the weekends. So, what happens when we need to restore some data at the end of the work week? Does it mean that we will loose all our data that we created or modified earlier on in the week, since we only have last week’s backup?

In reality, we don’t need to do a “full” backup each time we backup our servers, we can do “differential” backups. Differential backups are basically backups of of all the changes since the last “full” backup. In other words, only the difference since the last “full” backup.

A simple script to do differential backups for users’ home directory from Monday to Thursday and full backups on a Friday is as below.

#!/bin/bash
if [ `date +%w` -eq 5 ] ; then
if tar -cf /tmp/bck-full-`date +%F`.tar /home ; then
touch /var/log/bck/last-bck
tar -tf /tmp/bck-full-`date +%F`.tar > \
/var/log/bck/bck-`date +%F`.log
else
mail -s “Backup failed” root < ~
fi
elif [ `date +%w` -gt 0 ] && [ `date +%w` -lt 5 ] ; then
find /home -type f -newer /var/log/bck/last-bck | \
tar -cf /tmp/bck-diff-`date +%F`.tar -T -
if [ $? ] ; then
tar -tf /tmp/bck-diff-`date +%F`.tar > \
/var/log/bck/bck-`date +%F`.log
else
mail -s “Backup failed” root < ~
fi
fi

Of course, you will need to ensure that those directories used are already there and run the backups as root. (Note, script edited to fit the width of this posting, so if you have errors, please leave a comment).

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Differential backup script sample

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Automatically dating your tar backups

admin — Wed, 06 May 2009 05:38:01 +0000

Normally, we use the tar command coupled with some compression program such as gzip to create a backup of our directories. I.e.

# tar -cf /var/log/backup/tux.tar /home/tux

to backup the home directory of the user tux into the directory /var/log/backup.

However, if we are going to do this on a regular basis, we will be overwriting the file tux.tar. This would mean that we will only have one snapshot of the user tux home directory.

To keep copies of backups from different times, you will need to use different filenames, preferably with a date indicator. You can easily do this by,

# tar –cf /var/log/backup/tux-`date +%F`.tar /home/tux

Of course, if you backup a few times within the day, then you may want to use a different option from the +%F format option.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Automatically dating your tar backups

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Short and quick tutorial for the command “touch”

admin — Wed, 06 May 2009 05:19:12 +0000

The touch command is typically used for 2 purposes, to create a new file and to modify the access and modification times of the file. If the file already exist, it will update the both the access and modification times of the file and if it does not exist, it will create a new file. The latter is probably the most common usage of the command.

For example, to update the access and modification time stamp on a file to the current time;

# touch helloworld.c

You can also use a specific time by using the –t option or just modify either the access or modification time only, using the –a and –m options respectively.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Short and quick tutorial for the command “touch”

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Using command output with backquotes

admin — Wed, 06 May 2009 03:43:32 +0000

The backquote (`), which is quite alien to most Windows users, is the key just below the top left hand side ESC key on your keyboard. This is a useful key to use when you want to use the standard output of a UNIX/LINUX command as part of another command.

For example, if you want to output the results of an addition.

# expr 10 + 42
# 52

If you would like to make it fancier,

# echo “The sum is `expr 10 + 42`”
The sum is 52

Note the backquotes (in red).

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Using command output with backquotes

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

How to create shortcuts on Gnome desktop

admin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 01:51:28 +0000

Shortcuts on Linux is known as soft links and traditionally, this can be achieved by using the “ln –s” command and option. You can also achieve this on the Gnome desktop using the mouse only. However, unlike the Windows way to create a shortcut where you right click on the folder/file and near the bottom of the list there is the option to “Create Shortcut”.

In Gnome, the middle mouse button is used for this purposes (if you have a mouse that’s only 2 buttons, you can generally click on both to simulate the middle mouse button). As an example, OpenSuSE and SuSE both automatically mounts the Windows partition and assuming that you want to create a shortcut to these Windows partition on your desktop, you first select the Windows partition (as above).

Click (using the middle mouse button) and drag the mounted Windows directory to your desktop. Release the mouse button and select the “Link Here” option.

The shortcut to your selected Windows partition will be on your desktop.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

How to create shortcuts on Gnome desktop

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

How to mount NFS Filesystems at Boot Time

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:42:56 +0000

Network File System (NFS) is a network file system protocol originally developed by Sun Microsystems in 1984. With NFS, clients can mount filesystems across the network that are being offered by NFS servers and can work with them as if they were filesystems mounted from local disks. NFS is a simple and widely used method of sharing files across the network.

It is possible that you may want to mount particular NFS filesystems at boot time. You may also want to allow non-root users on the client to mount NFS shares themselves. In either of these cases, you will need to include a suitable entry in the file /etc/fstab. Just as this file controls the local filesystems that are to be mounted, it can also control the mounting of NFS shares.

For example, with this entry in /etc/fstab on the client:

susetips:/test /testmount nfs user,noauto,ro 0 0

any user on the client can mount (read-only) the specified directory from susetips on the specified mount point simply by issuing the command mount /testmount.

To force the directory to be mounted automatically, you might use the following:

susetips:/test /testmount nfs rw 0 0

This line in /etc/fstab ensures that the NFS share is mounted read-write whenever the system boots, provided that the service nfs is set to start in runlevel 3 on the client.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

How to mount NFS Filesystems at Boot Time

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Taking screenshots in SuSE

admin — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 05:51:57 +0000

SuSE Enterprise Linux Server comes with this simple yet effective tool to assist you to take screenshots. This is basically the same as using the “Print Screen” button and it can also be used to take a shot of the windows only, like using “Alt-Print Screen”.

The application has a camera as the icon and is called “Take Screenshot”. It can be found through the Application browser under the System category. The advantage of using this over the “Print Screen” button method is that you can specify the time lag before the system takes a screen shot.

It is also able to produce simple effects such as applying a drop shadow or a border. This is only available if you select “Grab the current window” option.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Taking screenshots in SuSE

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Using redirections: 2>&1 (Part 2 of 2)

admin — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 05:21:45 +0000

If you go through enough shell scripts, you will notice the frequent use of 2>&1. What does it mean and how it works?

We have briefly introduced standard in (stdin) and standard out (stdout). In the command line interface and also in shell programming, these are represented as follows:

0 Standard In (STDIN)
1 Standard Out (STDOUT)
2 Standard Error (STDERR)

The 2>&1 basically means that to redirect standard error (STDERR) to standard out (STDOUT). We use tar to archive the home directory of the user susetips and redirect the verbose output to a file bak.log as an example;

# tar cvf susetips.bak /home/susetips >> bak.log
tar: Removing leading ‘/’ from member names

The command above basically kept a listing of the files that were backed up in the file bak.log. This file can be kept as a reference to know what files were actually backed up. However, there’s a message from the tar command that still appeared on the terminal. This message is a warning/error message that outputs to STDERR, which in this case is the terminal. The >> redirection just puts the STDOUT to the file but not the STDERR. To redirect the STDERR to the same place as the STDOUT;

# tar cvf susetips.bak /home/susetips >> bak.log 2>&1
#

Where the 2 represented STDERR, > means redirect to and &1 is the variable name for STDOUT. You can check the content of the file bak.log by using the cat command.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Using redirections: 2>&1 (Part 2 of 2)

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Using redirections; , >> (Part 1 of 2)

admin — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 04:51:16 +0000

Redirections can be sometimes confusing to learn and utilize effectively. We will try to explain it in the simplest possible way that we think is effective. Please feel free to suggests a better approach to explaining it.

Firstly, the 3 basic redirections.

< ; this less than symbol is to instruct the shell to read from a file instead of the standard input (stdin) which is generally the keyboard. As an example, assuming that you have a file 2compute and using the command bc (basic calculator), you can redirect the content of 2compute for bc.

# cat 2compute
1 + 1
2 / 2
# bc < 2compute
2
1
#

> ; the greater than symbol is to redirect the standard out (stdout) to a file instead of the screen/monitor (depending on what stdout is defined as). As an example, the ls command which list the content of your directory will display it on your terminal. We can redirect the output into a file (we use mydirectory as an example)

# ls
bin Desktop Distribution Documents susetips
# ls > mydirectory
# cat mydirectory
bin
Desktop
Distribution
Documents
mydirectory
susetips

>> ; similarly to the > symbol, using double greater than will append to the specified file as oppose to overwriting the file (if it exists). Following our previous example, if you use the single >, it will overwrite the old file. Using the double >, it will append to it.

# cat mydirectory
bin
Desktop
Distribution
Documents
mydirectory
susetips
# ls > mydirectory
# cat mydirectory
bin
Desktop
Distribution
Documents
mydirectory
susetips
#ls >> mydirectory
# cat mydirectory
bin
Desktop
Distribution
Documents
mydirectory
susetips
bin
Desktop
Distribution
Documents
mydirectory
susetips
#

Next, the puzzling 2>&1

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Using redirections; <, >, >> (Part 1 of 2)

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Using the “date” command and it’s % options

admin — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:03:51 +0000

Well, you can’t really get a date with this command but it is a very useful command to know for administrative tasks as well as for automatic documentation through scripting.

However, the date command’s options often baffles a lot of people (well, in my administering SuSE Linux class anyway) especially when they read about the formatting using the % symbol on the man pages.

Let me briefly extract what the man pages say;

NAME
    date – print or set the system date and time

SYNOPSIS
    date [OPTION] … [+FORMAT]
    date [-u|—utc|—universal] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]

DESCRIPTION
    … blah blah …

    FORMAT controls the output. The only valid option
    for the second form specifies Coordinated
    Universal Time. Interpreted sequences are:

    %%    a literal %
    …
    %F    full date; same as %Y-%m-%d

I have seen many different attempts at trying to understand how to use the %F, e.g.

# date %F

# date –F

However, it is actually quite clear but somehow it is not the usual UNIX/LINUX command option format. To get the date in the format 2009-04-17 (today’s date), you simply do

# date +%F
2009-04-17

It becomes obvious after you read the man page again.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Using the “date” command and it’s % options

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Short and quick tutorial for the command “tar”

admin — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 10:00:46 +0000

We have recently posted about tarball and the use of tar coupled with compression programs to create it. Here, we will go through three (3) short tutorial on using tar.

To compress a list of files

To compress (the c in the options) a list of files into a specific file (the f in the options) whilst having the tar program to provide progress of it (verbose mode, the v in the option), we use

# tar cvf .tar

Leading / will be removed from the archived listing as this will prevent accidental replacement of system files if the file is uncompressed by root.

To uncompress a file

Similarly, we use the same command options where we replace the c with x (for eXtract).

# tar xvf tarfile.tar

This will extract all the files from the archive and recreate the directories and files in the location where the user is in. Note that, it is good practice to create a new directory, change directory into it before you extract from a tar archive. This is to prevent overwriting of existing files, unless that is the intention.

To view content of a file

Sometimes, we just want to check if we have a specific file in an archive. For example, if we are accessing a tape drive (at /dev/st0), we can list (the t in the option) the content using

# tar tvf /dev/st0

More often than not, the listing will be too long for us. We can pipe the output to grep.

# tar tvf /dev/st0 | grep

Hope this is short enough. Leave a comment if you want to ask questions pertaining to tar.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Short and quick tutorial for the command “tar”

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

What are .Z, .gz and .bz2 files?

admin — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 07:04:24 +0000

As part of a tarball distribution and also other compressed files, you will come across files with the .Z, .gz and .bz2 extensions. These are basically files that have been compressed using different applications, much like the .zip files predominantly found in the Windows environment.

compress for .Z files

The UNIX command compress is used to create and extract files with the .Z extension. Unfortunately, this is not available on SuSE. If you need to uncompress .Z files that you downloaded, you can use the command zcat.

gzip and gunzip for .gz files

This is the more common compression program and algorithm that’s used with Linux.

# gzip
# gunzip .gz

bzip2 and bunzip2 for .bz2 files

Known to have a more superior compression ratio than gzip but less frequently used.

# bzip2
# bunzip2 .bz2

zip and unzip for .zip files

Being in a world where Windows seems to be the norm, we can’t avoid receiving file that’s compressed with WinZIP or other tools that create .zip file. Luckily for us, we have zip and unzip for these files.

# zip .ZIP
# unzip .ZIP

Please comment if you have any further questions.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

What are .Z, .gz and .bz2 files?

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

What is a tarball?

admin — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:22:50 +0000

OpenSuSE and SuSE uses the Redhat Package Manager (rpm) for the distribution of software applications. However, from time to time, we will also be asked to download the tarball as oppose to the rpm package. So what is this tarball?

A tarball generally refers to a compressed archive file that contains the source codes for the software application. This is generally preferred method for source codes that are highly portable and have very little dependencies on the Linux distribution. In addition to the source codes, the tarball will generally also contain the necessary compilation instructions (documentation) and the Makefile.

The tarball file is made using the UNIX tar command which basically appends all the files into a single file. It is then compressed (using one of the various compression programs) resulting in either a .Z, .gz or a .bz2 extension. The current common format of a tarball has a file extension .tar.gz or .tgz.

More on the .Z, .gz and .bz2 extensions later.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

What is a tarball?

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Customizing Gnome Terminal fonts and colors

admin — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 02:30:22 +0000

By default, most SuSE and OpenSuse distribution selects Gnome as the window manager, KDE being the other option. Under Gnome, the terminal application is called the Gnome Terminal which has a better look and feel than the plain Terminal application (which is also available). The default size of the terminal may be too small for some of us, especially those who are using really large screens with very fine resolution.

To change the font and color settings, go to the “Edit” menu and select “Profile Preferences”.

You can deselect the “Use the system fixed width font” and click on the font selection “Monospace | 12”, to change the font size to whatever is suitable. The changes are instant and you can actually see it when you are selecting it.

To change the color combination, select the tab “Colors” (3rd tab on top). You need to de-select the “Use colors from system theme” and my personal preference for the moment is to have bright green text on a black background.

The screen above is from a 22” wide screen LCD. By enlarging the fonts and also matching the colors makes it easier to work.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Customizing Gnome Terminal fonts and colors

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Adding applications to “Favorites Applications”

admin — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 02:19:43 +0000

Having your regularly used applications on the Start Menu under the “Favorites Applications” section will come in handy as it will enable you to quickly launch the application. You can also create shortcuts (or technically speaking, links) on your Desktop to your favorite applications but some of us prefer a cleaner desktop.

To add an application to your “Favorite Applications” section of the start menu, select the application. You can use the “More Applications…” button on the start menu to select it.

Once you have identified the application that you regularly use, right click on the icon and select “Add to Favorites”. It’s as simple as that.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Adding applications to “Favorites Applications”

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

How to temporary disable users

admin — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:05:55 +0000

From time to time, we will need to disable users. This may be prior to the permanent deletion of the user account or just as a precautionary step.

As root, you can easily disable a user account by

# usermod –L

Or you can just add an ! in front of the 2nd field (the encrypted password) in the /etc/shadow entry of the user.

To re-enable the user, you can

# usermod –U

This will unlock the user, or simply put, remove the ! in front the password field of /etc/shadow.

If you would like to permanently delete a user, you should use

userdel –r

to also remove their home directories. Note that in a typical administration, you would usually keep the home directory in case of the need for their data.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

How to temporary disable users

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

How to create user with password assigned

admin — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:56:56 +0000

If you create new users (as root) using

# useradd –m tux

You will have created a newuser with it being disabled. This means that the password entry (the 2nd column) in the /etc/shadow will have a ! as the entry, i.e.

tux:!:14343:0:99999:7:::

You can use a script to go through it and change the ! to the encrypted password (which you can create earlier) but you must be aware that existing users that are disabled will have the 2nd field starting with !.

The -p option on useradd will require the encrypted password as the given parameter. This will be cumbersome if you are trying to use the script to create a set of new users and you will have to encrypt the individual passwords prior to using the useradd with the -p option.

In order to create a newuser with a password assigned, you can use

# useradd –m tux
# echo welcome | passwd –stdin tux

Or you can copy the following script and use it to create a new user with password and home directory.

#!/bin/sh
if [ $# –ne 2 ]; then
echo “Usage: $0 ”
exit 1
fi
useradd –m $1
echo $2 | passwd –stdin $1

There are other ways to do it as well, but this is an easy way to understand it. Have fun!

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

How to create user with password assigned

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

How to remove GRUB from MBR of Hard Drive

admin — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:48:57 +0000

If you are running multiboot operating systems from your hard drive then you will require GRUB. It is a boot loader package from the GNU Project. GRUB is the reference implementation of the Multiboot Specification, which allows a user to have several different operating systems on their computer at once, and to choose which one to run when the computer starts. With GRUB, it can be used to select from different kernel images available on a particular operating system’s partitions, as well as to pass boot-time parameters to such kernels.

However, if you are facing difficulties with your GRUB and would like to remove it from the Master Boot Record (MBR) of your hard drive, there are two ways to do so:

1. If you have Windows XP installed, then you can boot to XP’s recovery console and run the “fixmbr”. (Microsoft’s Help and Support)

2. You could download SuperGrubDisk and fix your xp bootloader. You could delete the MBR but first, make a backup. Assuming that you have one disk, sda, run the following command as root:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/home/xxxx/bkupmbr.img bs=446 count=1

Replace xxxx with whatever your user name is. Command above makes backup of mbr.

To delete mbr run command:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=446 count=1

Happy Trying!.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

How to remove GRUB from MBR of Hard Drive

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

How to setup and enable OpenSSH

admin — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:09:55 +0000

OpenSSH is a FREE version of the SSH connectivity tools. For many users of telnet, rlogin, and ftp, they may not realize that most of the time their password is transmitted across the Internet unencrypted. With OpenSSH, it encrypts all traffic (including passwords) to effectively eliminate eavesdropping, connection hijacking, and other attacks. Besides that, OpenSSH provides secure tunneling capabilities and several authentication methods, and supports all SSH protocol versions.

To setup and enable OpenSSH for SUSE/OpenSUSE, here are some simple steps to take:

Navigate to Yast
Select install software
From within the search box type openssh and choose install
Now get back to yast and go to security and users
Select firewall and select allowed services
From the services to allow, choose the secured shell server (refer to the above picture)

Happy Trying!

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

How to setup and enable OpenSSH

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

How to change font size for Yast and Sax2

admin — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 13:22:20 +0000

Sometimes the font size for your newly installed SUSE is too small for your reading pleasure. There are several ways to configure the font size. One method is to use the configuration utility for your window manager.

If you are using KDE then the configuration utility is called kcontrol. You can run it by typing kcontrol at a command prompt in a terminal emulator window. If you are using Gnome then you can select fonts by running gnome-control-center. This method however does not rectify the font size for Yast and Sax2. The other way is to go into the terminal, type su and enter root password, then type qtconfig and just choose the font that you want to use.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

How to change font size for Yast and Sax2

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

SUSE Studio : Create your own customized Linux OS

admin — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 10:56:48 +0000

Recently Novell has unveiled a sneak preview of the alpha release of SUSE Studio at VMworld. In a nutshell, SUSE Studio is an innovative way to enable both standardization and customization of a Linux distribution. With SUSE Studio, you can customize and build your own personal distribution in as many ways you could possibly think off.

As per Novell’s blog:

SUSE Studio is a new, innovative Web-based service to enable (independent software vendors), developers, and the community to quickly and easily “mass customize” Linux. SUSE Studio is the first tool to enable users to create fully supported, customized variants of SUSE Linux Enterprise and OpenSUSE, add additional software, and test the resulting image–all in one simple and easy-to-use interface

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KQQiibbtzY

SUSE Studio is currently undergoing alpha testing, and will be released as public beta later this year. To learn more about SUSE Studio, and to sign up for the alpha, go here.

You can also checkout the Official SUSE Studio’s Documentation page.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

SUSE Studio : Create your own customized Linux OS

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Short and quick tutorial for the command “find”

admin — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 06:30:15 +0000

We can learn about commands in Linux using the manpages, for example, to learn how to use the find command, we can just do

# man 1 find

However, this means we need to read the long manual and generally most of us are somewhat impatient. We will give short and quick tutorials on the common usage of the commands.

The find command is to search for files, directories, pipes, sockets, devices (anything that is defined as files in Linux) in the system. The quickest tutorial is

# find / –name

The ‘/’ tells the command to search from the root directory, another common variable here is ‘.’, which means to search from this directory onwards.

The ‘-name ’ specifies the file that you want to look for, e.g. proposal.txt as the filename.

That’s the shortest tutorial we can think of for “find”. For more advance stuff, “man 1 find”.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Short and quick tutorial for the command “find”

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

How to reset forgotten root password in SuSE Enterprise Server

admin — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 06:16:42 +0000

We do sometimes forget our passwords and what more when we don’t login to that particular account regularly. As good system administrators who automate most of the administrative tasks, we sometimes do not login to the root account often. This is especially so for a highly reliable and robust SLES based system.

Our earlier posting was for OpenSuSE, but for SuSE, the security is even tighter. The following technique would also work for OpenSuSE, and also most other distributions.

(1) Boot your server using the installation DVD. If the server is already powered on, you will need to do a hard power-on as you can’t shutdown (since you don’t have the root password).

(2) Select “Resue System” and login as root. No password is required here.

(3) You have now booted into the live DVD, that is, you have booted from the DVD and the file system mounted is that of the DVD. You will need to access your Hard Disk Drive which is not mounted by default. (In my scenario, my SuSE 11 partition is on an extended partition and is on device /dev/sda7. Yours maybe different and if your system is a pure SuSE 11 (which should be the case), it is likely to be /dev/sda1, if using SATA or SCSI. If using IDE, you can try /dev/hda1. To access (mount) the SuSE 11 partition on directory /mnt;

#mount /dev/sda7 /mnt

(4) Edit /mnt/etc/shadow which is where the encrypted passwords are stored. Note that you are not suppose to edit /etc/shadow which is one used for the Live DVD. Furthermore, you won’t be able to save the /etc/shadow as it is a read-only filesystem.

(5) Search for the entry starting with “root:”.

(6) Remove 2nd field (the fields are separated by the ‘:’, resulting in something that resembles

root::14329::::::

(7) Save and exit your editor. Remove your DVD.

(8) Boot into single user mode by keying in “single” at the GRUB boot menu. You will not be able to access or change root password if you boot into graphical mode.

(9) After booting, you will be greeted on the command line with “Press enter for login:”, do as it says and you are in.

(10) Change root password by “passwd”. There you go … and reboot.

Any comments or ideas for further improvement are most welcome.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

How to reset forgotten root password in SuSE Enterprise Server

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Tripwire : Open Source Security Utility

admin — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 13:10:04 +0000

In term of security, there are many basic security tools that you can add. Tripwire is one of the best file system monitoring tools around. In a nutshell, Tripwire helps to record information about important files (such as checksums) in a database. If anything changes in those files, Tripwire will catch the change when it runs (configure it as often as you like with cron) and will alert you.

Tripwire OpenSource project is based on codes that is originally contributed by Tripwire, Inc. in 2000. Tripwire can alert systems administrators whenever there is any possible intrusion attempts by periodically verifying the integrity of a server’s file systems. It is known that most systems intruders will often use trojan binaries for login, su, ps, and ls, etc. to cover their tracks and keep a low profile on the system. Thus, under normal circumstances even astute systems administrators may not observe the intrusion because the trojan binaries mimic the system binaries so well. By using a strong checksum method similar to MD5,

Tripwire can identify with absolute certainty whether or not a file has been modified, unlike similar programs that use weaker algorithms such as CRC to calculate checksums. While useful for detecting intrusions after the event, it can also serve many other purposes, such as integrity assurance, change management, and policy compliance.

Installation

To install Tripwire, you may issue the following commands as root:

  tar xvzf tripwire-2.3-47.i386.tar.gz

  rpm -ivh tripwire-2.3-47.i386.rpm

Once the software is installed with rpm, the installation shell script will need to be executed to finish the Tripwire installation. This is done by issuing the command:

  /etc/tripwire/twinstall.sh

as root. Note that all Tripwire associated files are kept in the /etc/tripwire directory.

Download Tripwire

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Tripwire : Open Source Security Utility

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

How to install OpenOffice.org in SLES from a SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop ISO file

admin — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 02:41:02 +0000

After installing SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (SLES 11), there are some packages that may be required that’s not on the SLES 11 DVD but is available from the SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (SLED 11) DVD. One such example is OpenOffice.org.

If you already have the SLED DVD, you can install from it by adding the SLED DVD as a new repository. If you don’t, you can download the ISO image from Novell.

Once downloaded, you need to;

Start Yast –> Software Manager
Ctrl-R or go to Configuration –> Repositories
Click on “Add” and select “Local ISO image …”
Key in the location of the ISO image, agree to the license agreement and you will have it included in your repository
Search for “openoffice” and select “OpenOffice_org”. Click on “Accept” and it will install accordingly.
You will have it installed on your system. Go to your start menu, click on “Application”, you will find OpenOffice.org application icons.

Good luck!

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

How to install OpenOffice.org in SLES from a SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop ISO file

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Novell Launches SuSE 11

admin — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 02:35:00 +0000

Novell on Wednesday (24th March 2009) launched SUSE Linux Enterprise 11, with the capability for policy-driven system management and enhancements to its high-availability clustering.

SLES 11 also will soon be certified to run in the Amazon EC2 cloud, Novell officials said.

Some of the highlights of the latest version of SLES 11 are;

Runs .NET applications on Linux

This is achieved by the Mono extension and since SuSE is the leading Linux distribution for non-x86 machines, it means that .NET applications can run on the IBM system Z machines!

Includes Moonlight

The Linux version of Microsoft’s Silverlight.

Support for OOXML

Simply put, compatible with Microsoft Office’s native file. This was already available in SLED 10 but it is announced that they will ship it with OpenOffice.org Novell Edition.

There aren’t much significant updates from SLES 10 and most of the highlights of the announcement has to do with integrating with Microsoft seamlessly.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Novell Launches SuSE 11

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

How to remove corrupted .gvfs directory

admin — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 07:45:37 +0000

The .gvfs directory found in home directories of users is actually the GnomeVFS (Gnome Virtual File System). This provides seamless and uniform access for the Nautilus file manager to users data no matter where and how it is stored. Data can be stored on a remote mounted file system, the local disk, a USB drive or a digital camera and from the user’s perspective, it is the same.

However, you may get a permission denied when accessing this directory (this is a bug). And even as a superuser/root, you will not be able to enter, delete or change permissions of the directory. When listing the home directory, you will get

d????????? ? ? ? ? ? .gvfs

Some applications will fail to execute and you are stuck! Well, the .gvfs is a filesystem, so you can umount it!

umount /home//.gvfs
rm –r /home//.gvfs

You may not want to remove it but once you un-mount it, this should be a safe thing to do (as long as you never had a directory by that name before) but you may want to just check on it.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

How to remove corrupted .gvfs directory

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Compiling C++ code using iostream in G++ version 4.3 and above

admin — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:07:27 +0000

In the past, prior to G++ version 4.3, a code like

#include
int main() {
cout << “hello world” << endl;
return 0;
}

would probably compile (g++ ) with the possibility of some warning messages. With version 4.3 and newer, it will give you an error message stating that

iostream.h: No such file or directory

There are mainly 2 changes here; (1) GCC 4.3 does not recognize iostream.h anymore and will comply with the latest C++ standards of using iostream and (2) you will need to have “using namespace std;” at the top for it to recognize iostream.

using namespace std;

#include
int main() {
cout << “hello world” << endl;
return 0;
}

And compile it with g++.

This is only IF you have not been following proper C++ standards and especially so, when you mix C and C++ code together. If you did learned to code C++ properly, you would not have such an issue anyway.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Compiling C++ code using iostream in G++ version 4.3 and above

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

What’s the difference between “su” and “su –”?

admin — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 11:54:13 +0000

We get asked this question quite often and maybe it is good to give a simple explanation. “su” by itself means that you would like to assume the super user identity. You can also assume the identity of another user using “su ”.

Then, many people actually ask why do we usually type “su –” instead of just “su”? The main difference is that the one with the “-“ will run the to-be-assumed userid’s startup scripts which will basically mean that you will have the environment settings (such as $PATH) as though you are logged in as the new userid. Without the “-“, you will have the environment settings of the current userid (probably your userid).

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

What’s the difference between “su” and “su –”?

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Differential backup script sample

Manually Starting and Stopping Services in Suse/OpenSuse

admin — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 11:50:32 +0000

YaST provides a extremely easy way for system administrators to manage which services run at boot. The YaST Runlevel Editor module is easy to understand and gives you important information about each service. You can choose to start or stop a process with nothing more than a mouse click.

To view what are the what services that are currently running, you can open the Runlevel Editor module from the YaST System page. It will display a list of all the available services. If you change the configuration file for a particular service, you usually have to stop and restart the service to use the new configuration. For example, when making changes to the X server, it is often worthwhile to change from Runlevel 5 to Runlevel 3 to test the changes, then switch back to re-enable the display manager. This way, if you make a mistake, you can fix it and get it right without having to reboot every time.

e.g. To stop, start, or restart any service, open a shell as the SuperUser. To see if your ALSA sound server is running, type the following:

/etc/init.d/alsasound status

The script will report its status. It should report

ALSA sound driver loaded.             running

To stop and restart the service, type

/etc/init.d/alsasound restart

and the following should appear:

Shutting down sound driver               done

Starting sound driver:  via82xx          done

Restoring the previous sound setting     done

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Manually Starting and Stopping Services in Suse/OpenSuse

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

How to Burn ISO image onto CD / DVD

admin — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:56:29 +0000

Often you may download some applications from the Internet that is stored as ISO image file. An ISO image is an archive file (also known as a disk image) of an optical disc in a format defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). So here is a simple tip on how to burn ISO image onto your CD/DVD.

First, insert a blank CD/DVD into your drive, the file manager will automatically appear. Navigate in the file manager and find the ISO image file that you want to burn onto the CD/DVD. Drag and drop the image file to the blank DVD-ROM (or CD-ROM) disk.

You will be asked whether you want to “Create From Image” or “Create With File”. The “Create With File” option will basically copy the files found in the image into the CD/DVD whilst the “Create From Image” will map the whole image file onto the CD/DVD. Choose the “Create From Image”.

A new dialog box will appear, just select “Write” and let it proceed.

It will take some time to complete and once it has completed, a new message box will appear. Select “Close”. Voila!, just a few simple steps.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

How to Burn ISO image onto CD / DVD

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

Open Special Locations in Nautilus with URI

admin — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 02:51:24 +0000

For Linux, the official file manager for the GNOME desktop is Nautilus. In case you wondering the origin for Nautilus, it is a play on words. By evoking the shell of a nautilus to represent an operating system shell. Nautilus replaced Midnight Commander in GNOME 1.4 and was the default from version 2.0 onwards.

There are many ways to open an application in Nautilus. However, here’s a simple tip that you might not know. You can open special locations in Nautilus by entering the URI in the location bar. An Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a string of characters used to identify or name a resource on the Internet. You can invoke the location bar by using the keyboard shortcut key Ctrl+L.

For example, if you would like to show Computer and lists the disk partitions, you can type in computer:///. Similarly, you can try the following special location URIs :

network:/// to show the network locations
burn:/// to see the inbuilt CD application
fonts:/// to list the fonts installed on the system
burn:/// to open the CD Writing Window.
themes:/// to list the themes available for the Gnome Desktop
system-settings:/// to give access to system settings.

These URIs can be handy and it could be a time saver indeed.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Open Special Locations in Nautilus with URI

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

How to configure YaST firewall for BitTorrent

admin — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 13:22:56 +0000

The most file sharing protocol is non other than the famous BitTorrent protocol. However sometimes you may be experiencing slow downloads when sharing P2P files when using BitTorrent client e.g. Utorrent. This is most likely to occur when your computer is behind a home router or software firewall. The OpenSuse firewall -YaST makes it nearly impossible to use the BitTorrent protocol. Extremely slow download times could be the end result.

However, there are two ways that may help to get BitTorrent running smoothly:

Start the YaST firewall and select the zone you want to allow services for (where you want the enabled port). Click [Advanced] and enter the correct information (syntax from-port:to-port numeric). Click [OK], and YaST will ask you if you are sure. Click [Continue] to return to the main dialog; click [Cancel] to re-enter the port numbers. After returning to the main menu, click [Next] and [Accept] to finish configuration.
Open the /etc/sysconfig/SuSEfirewall2 file in any text-editor Add the required ports to the FW_SERVICES_EXT_TCP, FW_SERVICES_INT_TCP or FW_SERVICES_DMZ_TCP variable. (# Examples: “ssh”, “123 514″, “3200:3299″, “ftp 22 telnet 512:514″)

You may try to add TCP: “6881:6999″ but this could result in a security risk. Always remember this is because not only P2P clients can use this port.

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

How to configure YaST firewall for BitTorrent

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips:

How to recover OpenSuse Lost Root Password

admin — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 06:19:51 +0000

Hopefully not but from time to time, we may somehow forgot what our root password is. This can happen in the case where you are managing a teaching laboratory, CAD/CAM workstations or your grandmother’s OpenSuSE PC! These are situations where once the machine is setup, you rarely need to have system administration access. So, the first answer is … re-install!

Heck no, an easier way is to

Boot into single user mode
Change password
Reboot

Booting into single user mode

Assuming that you did not password protect your GRUB boot loader (default boot loader for most Linux distribution), to boot into single user mode in most Linux distribution, you simply need to ask it to boot into single user mode (runlevel 1) but as rightly pointed out (see comment), in OpenSuSE, instead of simply pressing “1” when greeted with the following screen, you need to instead input “init=/bin/sh“. By pressing “1″, you will still be required to enter the root password.

GRUB startup

(Note, not all GRUB screens are like that, if by pressing “1”, it boots immediately, then the next time, press ESC to go to the text based menu. From there, select the entry and press “e” to edit and then go to the boot instruction line and press “e” again. You can then add the “1” at the end of the command. Press “b” after that to boot)

Change password

Once in single user mode, you should just get the following command line prompt.

your-hostname:~ #

You are actually logged in as root (superuser) and you can change the password from there.

your-hostname:~ # passwd
Changing password for root.
New Password:

Enter your new password (and this time remember it!). You should see the following to confirmed that the password has changed.

Reenter New Password:
Password changed.

Reboot

Simlpy type,

your-hostname:~ # reboot

Your root password has been reset!

Post from: Suse & OpenSuse Tips
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

How to recover OpenSuse Lost Root Password

---
Related Articles at Suse & OpenSuse Tips: