Installing SuSE 10.3

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Revision as of 23:42, 17 January 2008 by Matt (talk | contribs) (→‎Graphics card)

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Installing SUSE 10.3 on AO linux computers.

First and most important step:

Be prepare to trash your computer and lose everything stored on it.

So make sure you know what software you installed on it before you decided to update the system, also make sure you know what every other user installed on it. Look in /etc and /local for evidence of non standard software (eg matlab, comsol, cadence, coventor etc and locally produced software such as c_scan, BNS, etc and check in /etc for evidence of configuration files eg /etc/stages /etc/andor etc).

Back up anything you might need - files, programs, data, configurations etc.

However, if you are on the AO linux network your personal files and data are most likely stored of the server (anything in /home is on the server).

  • If in doubt ASK someone in the know *

Second step: Your computer

  • What kind of processor? (arch)
  • What disks / partitions does it have? (df, /etc/fstab)
  • what is the hostname? (hostname)
  • What are your network settings? (ifconfig)
  • What is the root password? (you should know)
  • What cards / screens / gadgets does it have?

Third step:

Get hold of the SUSE 10.3 install DVD for your computer. If the arch is i386/i586/i686 (32 bit machines) you will need the i386 disk. If the arch is x86_64 (64 bit machines) you need the x86_64 disk. If you are unlucky enough to be using a PPC machine you need the PPC disk and a lot of patience.

Fourth step: The install

Stick the DVD in the drive, reboot the computer, follow the instructions:

UK English keyboard UK timezone

Partitioning:

If your computer has been properly setup in the past you should have:

  • A swap partition (roughly twice the size of your RAM)
  • 20Gb "root" partition
  • A remainder partition (normally mounted on /eee)
  • You may also have a large data partition and a windows partition.

You should be able to relate the info here to the information about your disks you found during your preparation. Assuming all is well all you need to do is follow the custom partition settings to reformat the 20Gb "root" partition and mount it as "/". You can leave the rest untouched and anything on the other disks will be preserved. You should set the mount points of the other partitions / disks here.

ASSUMING YOUR COMPUTER DOESN'T MATCH THIS: Stop and ask for advice before proceeding. There are very good reasons for switching to a root + other partition scheme.

Assuming you have a sensible partition scheme you can proceed and your / partition and data on it will be wiped and the new system installed on top of them. This could take the best part of an hour so go and get a cup of tea or fix this page on the wiki...

Have a look at AO linux partitioning for more information.

Step five: Configuring your computer

There are a number of steps in the SUSE install to follow and then a number of steps to configure your computer for the local environment:

Root password: You should know this - use the previous one.

Check install: Just reports errors nothing for you to do.

Hostname: This is the name of your computer - use the previous one. The domain is eee.nottingham.ac.uk

Network settings: You usually only have one network card and if you have two either know what you are doing or ask for help.

  1. General network settings: leave alone.
  2. Firewall:
    1. open SSH, Secure Shell server, NIS client, NFS client, cups
    2. Under "Logging Level", select "Do not log any" for both Accepted and Not Accepted Packets
  3. Network interfaces: Edit this
    1. Overview:Config:Address Select static IP and enter your IP address (from your notes), Subnet mask 255.255.0.0, Hostname and Domain name (eee.nottingham.ac.uk).
    2. Hostnames/DNS
      1. Set Hostname and Domainname as before
      2. Names servers are 128.243.40.192, 128.243.40.194, 128.243.21.19 Domain search eee.nottingham.ac.uk
    3. Proxy: Set the first box to http://optics.eee.nottingham.ac.uk:62267 No proxy for (comma-separated list): localhost, 127.0.0.1, .nottingham.ac.uk, .nott.ac.uk
    4. Next the install will try to test the net setting - if there isn't a good reason for this to fail it should work!
  4. Registration: just click next and allow it to attempt this - it sets up repositories if it can
  5. Users: select NIS
    1. NIS domain name applied_optics
    2. NIS servers 128.243.74.2 128.243.74.4 separated by a space
    3. Select start automounter
  6. Ignore release notes unless you are interested
  7. Hardware config: Mainly gets it right but sometimes selects a lower screen resolution that you want or gets the monitor wrong (you usually want 24bit colour).
  8. Machine reboots here and if all is well you can now log in as usual!

Post installation configuration

  1. Log in as yourself - if this doesn't work seek advice. Then become root and cd /home/share/suse_hacks/10.3 and run the appropriate script for your location: std_suse_10.3_hacks_ao, std_suse_10.3_hacks_ibios, std_suse_10.3_hacks_sios, std_suse_10.3_hacks_vlsi etc. There isn't a huge lot of difference except for local stuff like default printers. The script deletes some SUSE irritations (eg beagle), sets up some useful stuff (eg locate) and installs dead useful software such as compilers, latex and xfig.
  2. There are still some configuration things to do, this involves using the YaST configuration suite, you'll find it somewhere in the SuSE menu (or, as root, type "yast2" from a console window). If you run it from the SuSE menu, you will need to provide the root password.
  3. In the "Software" submenu, click on "Community Repositories"
    1. One repository should already be checked: "Main Update Repository"
    2. Add "Main Repository (OSS)", "Main Repository (NON-OSS)" and, if you have a fairly modern (last 4 years) nVIDIA graphics card, "NVIDIA Repository"
    3. Click "Finish" and if it asks you questions about keys, them trust and import them.
  4. Click on "Software Repositories"
    1. For the "openSUSE-10.2-DVD 10.3" repository, make sure "Enabled" is NOT selected (i.e. deselect it).
    2. Click "Finish"
  5. Click on "Automatic Online Update"
    1. Click "Enable automatic update"
    2. Update daily (some time in the evening if you leave your PC on overnight). Make sure "Skip interactive patches" is checked (it should be by default) - this prevents SuSE installing things like kernel updates without your knowledge.
    3. Click "Finish"
  6. On the "Network Services" submenu, click on "NTP Configuration"
    1. Click on "During Boot"
    2. As the NTP Server Configuration address, use: ntp0.nottingham.ac.uk (it's a zero, not a capital "oh")
    3. Click on "Test", it should respond something like "Server is reachable and responds properly"
    4. Click "Finish"

Graphics card

There is a good chance you have an nVIDIA graphics card in your computer. If so you will probably want to install the nVIDIA graphics driver. This is not included in the default installation because of licensing issues but YAST can manage it for most cards.

  1. If you added the nVIDIA repository, then, in the "Software" submenu, click on "Software Management" (if not see above!)
    1. Search for nvidia
    2. Select "nvidia-gfxG01-kmp-default"
    3. Click "Next" It will tell you it's installing some other nvidia-related stuff to satisfy dependencies.
    4. When it's done, quit the Software Management utility.


When you log out, X should restart and you should now be running the nVIDIA graphics driver with 3D acceleration. Try an openGL screen saver or start glxgears.

If this fails (and it is known to fail for very old and very new cards) you will have to use the manual method - ask for advice. Manually installed nVIDIA drivers are not automatically updated by YAST and can be screwed up by certain updates and will require reinstalling - you may wish to turn certain updates off (ask).

SaX2 (the YaST graphics config tool) doesn't really understand nVIDIA cards if it doesn't do what you want then try this tool instead: http://www.sorgonet.com/linux/nv-online/ which worked for me (Matt)

Local Software

  • Steve / Roger - a wiki page for setting up matlab, comsol, cadence etc would be dead handy linked here
  • c_scan: there is another wiki page which mentions installing c_scan: link is here. Once you have installed c_scan, if you type "man c_scan" you will get the root of the c_scan documentation. Look at the "See also" section at the bottom for hints on specific modules... this this normally the name of the module/action, preceded by "c_" (e.g. "man c_agilent_trace_scope")

Multimedia

You will probably want the multimedia codecs for SUSE. The easiest way to get these is to follow this link http://opensuse-community.org/Multimedia and click on "codecs-kde.ymp". This should get you a full set of multimedia codecs that don't come with SUSE by default because of licensing issues.

64 bit vs 32 bit computers

Annoyingly some software doesn't come in 64 bit flavours and this can cause you significant headaches. In particular a large number of browser plugins only come in 32 bit version (flash, java etc). There is supposed to be a way around this but thus far no one has been able to demonstrate it working properly for me.

My advice: downgrade Firefox to the 32 bit version (in my case I had to remove the 64 bit version and then install the 32 bit version). You can do the same for Java and Java plugin (the rest of the plugins seem to install automatically). To do this use YaST, selct the software you wish to change and selcted i386, i586 or i686 versions in the "Versions" tab.

If someone finds a way to do it 64 bit then feel free to add to this wiki... Matt

Printers

These should get set up when you run the appropriate "suse_hack" script. There is a general page of advice regarding the AOG printers here.

Finally

You should have a working system now and hopefully you won't suddenly remember that something important was installed on one of the disks you wiped. Please fix errors in this wiki.

Cheers,


Matt

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