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enSUSE was released on ____. I downloaded the 32-bit DVD today, because I wanted to try the new LXDE Desktop that is included with the disk (thanks to Andreas for making that effort!). It is currently being test driven on VirtualBox on openSUSE 11.2, and MAN is it ever FAST! It’s probably the 1.5GB RAM upgrade Read more…
I have always find GNU find to be a little bit tricky to use. It is indeed quite a powerful program. It allows you to search anywhere, for anything! With the output, you can use the -exec option to run a command on each and every file find finds.
UPDATE: I changed ‘>’ (erase file, then write to file) to ‘>>’ (append to file). This avoids you overwriting your, or other peoples’, public keys.
Setting up password-less logins is both dangerous, and mighty. It allows one to authenticate to an OpenSSH server without typing in a password. Authentication is gained via knowledge of a private key.
$> ssh-keygen -t rsa Generating public/private rsa key pair. Enter file in which to save the key (/home/felipe/.ssh/id_rsa): Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): <ENTER> Enter same passphrase again: <ENTER> Your identification has been saved in /home/felipe/.ssh/id_rsa. Your public key has been saved in /home/felipe/.ssh/id_rsa.pub. The key fingerprint is: d7:79:c3:01:ce:90:71:a2:a2:3d:83:26:fb:9a:1f:5b felipe@linux.local
You will then find two files inside your directory. Keep them safe, secure, and secret. The public key (the one with .pub at the end) can be widely disemmindated. It represents the antonym of secrecy and privacy. The private key, however, must remain private and secret at all times.
You must copy your public key to a remote host. The host will verify that you own the private key by encrypting a “challenge” and forcing your ssh client to decrypt it. If successful, you are authenticated, and admitted entrance. A password isn’t required.
$> cat /home/felipe/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh felipe@remote-host.com \ "cat - >> .ssh/authorized_keys" felipe@remote-host.com's password: <PASSWORD>
This copies your public key the authorized_keys file (NB: authorized_keys2 is deprecated and no longer recommended for use. OpenSSH checks both).
‘logout’ or ‘exit’ and try:
$> ssh felipe@remote-host.com
It should not ask you for a password. You should automatically be logged into the remote system.
‘scp’ and ‘rsync’ both use a ssh client at the backend, and so will also authenticate automatically utilising your public and private key pair. Try:
$> scp file_a felipe@remote-host.com:file_b
This should transfer without pausing to ask for your password. Likewise try:
$> rsync -r /backups/2010/Jan felipe@remote-host.com:/backups/2010
This should backup your entire directory to remote-host.com without pausing to ask for a password. You can put a line similar to this one in a shell script, and run it with cron once a week or so. It will automatically backup your system, using OpenSSH, and proven secure and safe method for authentication of human and machines across an untrusted public network, away from curious eyes.
For this setup, I used 4 320GB sata 300 hard drives. This array is not configured for booting, just for redundant storage. My four drives are:
There are a few ways to do this. I just overwrite the first million bytes with zeroes.
$> dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdb bs=1M count=1
Another way to do it, is using fdisk, like this
$> fdisk /dev/sdc d (deletes a partition by its number) 1 (partition number) w (writes changes to the disk) q (quit without saving)
For best results, one should remove all partitions from all the RAID members.
We can use fdisk again, like this:
$> fdisk /dev/sdd n (this makes new partition) p (primary (not extended)) 1 (number 1) start: <press enter> end: <press enter> t (selects partition type) fd (0xFD is the symbol for Linux RAID partition) w (writes changes to disk) q (quits without saving changes)
Repeat this process for all your RAID members. Do not format these disks. We will first build the array, then format the array.
$> mdadm --create --level=5 --metadata=1.2 --raid-devices=4 \ /dev/md0 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1
Now that you’ve created it, you don’t need to assemble it. In case you need to, however, this is how you can do it.
$> mdadm --assemble <ARRAY> <DEVICES> ...
$> mdadm --assemble /dev/md0 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1
You can check progress with
$> cat /proc/mdstat
It is a good practice to check your array every now and again. See a detailed report with:
$> mdadm -vD /dev/md0
Which does a –verbose –detail ‘ed check of your array /dev/md0.
You can partition the array with your favourite program. Don’t partition the drives! Partition the array /dev/md0! I use fdisk:
$> fdisk /dev/md0 n (new partition) 1 (number) start: <press enter> end: <press enter> w (write changes to disk) q (quit without saving changes)
Next you format the partition with your favourite filesystem. I like ext3. My distribution ships with a shortcut program called mkfs.ext3. You may require mke2fs, which by default create an ext2 filesystem. Add option -j to create a journaling ext3 filesystem. Type man mke2fs for more information.
$> mkfs.ext3 -v -L ADD-A-LABEL /dev/md0p1
Where ‘p1′ is the first partition on the array. The array may still show ‘rebuilding’ bur it is usable. It will not be fully redundant, however, until rebuilding status shows 100%.
It should read something like this:
#/etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf DEVICE /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1 CREATE owner=root group=disk mode=0660 auto=yes MAILADDR root #MAILADDR xxxxx@domain.com ARRAY /dev/md0 metadata=1.2 num-devices=4 devices=/dev/sdb1,/dev/sdc1,/dev/sdd1,/dev/sde1
Your /etc/fstab should include a line similar to:
#/etc/fstab # automount /dev/md0 raid partition /dev/md0p1 /mnt/mountpoint ext3 rw,user 0 0
My /etc/fstab reads:
/dev/md0p1 /media/leopard ext3 rw,user,noacl,noatime,nodiratime,noauto 0 2
noacl,nodiratime,noatime should improve performance of ext3. noauto prevents filesystem from being mounted automatically, just in case (I’m paranoid). The ’2′ at the end makes fsck scan the drive after 31 or so mounts. See man mount for more options.
Update: There is another terrific guide explaining how to modify and grow a RAID1 array with 2 (or more) disks to a RAID5 array.
I will never again buy a RAID Controller card from Promise again! They claimed to support GNU/Linux, and they don’t. They said they didn’t have drivers for Windows 7, and then suddenly they magically appear on their Downloads page. We weren’t even notified.
I’m going to go with mdadm and try my luck with software RAID on Mint. If I must buy another card, for whatever reason (namely software RAID is much too slow, and hardware RAID will offload the work to the card itself) I’ll go with Adaptec.
I must say I found openSUSE 11.2 to be a major disappointment. I’ve come to expect better, much better, from Novell. If it weren’t for the stability issues with KDE and relatively poor netbook support this distribution would have been a keeper for me. There really is a lot to like. Perhaps the results will be different for people with different hardware. For me, though, openSUSE 11.2 just doesn’t compare favorably to the other major distributions and I can’t recommend it at this time.
French Police save Millions switching to Ubuntu
The French national police force, the Gendarmerie Nationale, has spoken about their migration away from the Windows platform to Linux. Estimated to have already saved the force 50 Million Euros, the migration is due to be completed on all 90,000 workstations by 2015. Of the move, Lt. Col. Guimard had this comment: “Moving from Microsoft XP to Vista would not have brought us many advantages and Microsoft said it would require training of users. Moving from XP to Ubuntu, however, proved very easy. The two biggest differences are the icons and the games. Games are not our priority.”
The openSUSE Project is proud to announce the release of openSUSE 11.1. The openSUSE 11.1 release includes more than 230 new features, improvements to YaST, major updates to GNOME, KDE, OpenOffice.org, and more freedom with a brand new license, Liberation fonts, and openJDK. This is also the first release built entirely in the openSUSE Build Service.
Digg this story! http://digg.com/linux_unix/openSUSE_11_1_Released
All of the Sneak Peeks for this release are available at on openSUSE News. You can also find a bevy of screenshots, and a list of features found in openSUSE 11.1. You can also find a lengthy list of packages and version numbers on DistroWatch.
Let’s take a look at some of the specific additions in openSUSE 11.1!
Desktop users will find a lot to like in this release. Users can choose from the leading edge of GNOME and KDE development with GNOME 2.24.1 and KDE 4.1.3. We’ve also included KDE 3.5.10 for users who prefer the classic KDE experience.
GNOME has gotten a good set of improvements since the 11.0 release. GNOME 2.24.1 features tabbed browsing and a new compact view in Nautilus, improvements for Gmail users in Evolution, along with mail templates, a new version of Ekiga, and additional improvements in F-Spot.
This release also includes a brand-new release of the ever-popular Banshee. Banshee 1.4 sports support for Internet radio, compilation albums, a Now Playing window for video and audio, support for syncing to Android phones, and many other features that make Banshee an excellent multimedia player for the Linux desktop.
KDE 4 has a huge number of improvements since openSUSE 11.0. In this release you’ll find the KDE-PIM suite back in KDE 4, new games, the KSCD CD player, KSystemLog to keep track of system changes, improvements to Dolphin, Konqueror, and Marble integration with OpenStreetMap. KDE has now standardized on PackageKit for its backend, which means both desktops are using the same update stack.
The openSUSE KDE team has also backported some key features from KDE 4.2, including compositing features for KWin to provide more desktop effects, and auto-hiding of the panel, and power management thanks to PowerDevil.
If you’re not quite ready to make the transition to KDE 4, relax. openSUSE 11.1 includes KDE 3.5.10 for the “classic” KDE experience. Simply install openSUSE 11.1 from the DVD media and choose KDE 3.5.10 from the selection of other window managers in the desktop selection screen.
This release includes OpenOffice.org 3.0, which features many improvements over the 2.4 release found in openSUSE 11.0. OpenOffice.org 3.0 Novell edition provides better Excel interoperability, performance enhancements, 3D slide transitions, and other features not found in upstream OpenOffice.org.
This release also includes support for ODF 1.2, import filters for OOXML, Gstreamer and Mono integration, and a lot more. For developers, this is the first release that includes the split build, making it easier to work on components of OpenOffice.org and get involved in its development.
openSUSE 11.1 also includes several changes “under the hood,” including a new kernel release, updated Glibc, new version of PackageKit, Smolt integration, and many other updated applications and utilities:
The YaST team has been busy with this release, working on a number of improvements including new and re-written modules. openSUSE 11.1 includes a new printer module, redesigned partitioner module, and a security module that allows you to check the overall security of your system.
openSUSE is now available for immediate download. openSUSE 11.1 comes with many choices of installation media.
You can also purchase a retail box with openSUSE 11.1 that includes 90-day installation support, physical media, and a printed Getting Started guide.
We want to hear from you! The openSUSE Project has many channels of communication:
To keep up to date with openSUSE, be sure to keep an eye on openSUSE News and watch Planet SUSE for blog posts from the openSUSE community.
Want to help the openSUSE Project? To get involved with openSUSE see the How to Participate page on the openSUSE wiki. We can use lots of different skills to help the project, so feel free to jump in!
openSUSE 11.1 represents the combined effort of thousands of developers who participate in openSUSE and upstream projects shipped in openSUSE. The contributors, inside and outside the openSUSE Project, should be proud of this release, and they deserve a major “thank you” for all of the hard work and care that have gone into 11.1. We hope that openSUSE 11.1 is the best openSUSE release yet, and that it will help to encourage the use of Linux everywhere! We hope that you have a lot of fun while you use openSUSE 11.1, and we look forward to working with you on 11.2!
The top 4 Corporate Contributers are:
1) Red Hat, 11.2 percent
2) Novell, 8.9 percent
3) IBM, 8.3 percent
4) Intel, 4.1 percent
see the rest…