openSUSE 12.2 Release Notes

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Version:

12.2.8 (2012-08-21)

Copyright    2012 Novell, Inc.

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

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

These release notes cover the following areas:

  • Section  1,    Miscellaneous   : These entries are automatically
    included from openFATE, the Feature- and Requirements Management System
    (http://features.opensuse.org).

    N/A

  • Section  2,    Installation   : Read this if you want to install the
    system from scratch.

  • Section  3,    General   : Information that everybody should read.

  • Section  4,    System Upgrade   : Issues related to the process if you
    run a system upgrade from the previous release to this openSUSE
    version.

  • Section  5,    Technical   : This section contains a number of
    technical changes and enhancements for the experienced user.

1.  Miscellaneous

N/A

2.  Installation

2.1.  For Detailed Installation Information

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

3.  General

3.1.  openSUSE Documentation

  • In Start-Up, find step-by-step installation instructions, as well as
    introductions to the KDE and Gnome desktops and to the LibreOffice
    suite. Also covered are basic administration topics such as deployment
    and software management and an introduction to the bash shell.

  • Reference covers administration, and system configuration in detail and
    explains how to set up various network services.

  • The Security Guide introduces basic concepts of system security,
    covering both local and network security aspects.

  • The System Analysis and Tuning Guide helps with problem detection,
    resolution and optimization.

  • Virtualization with KVM offers an introduction to setting up and
    managing virtualization with KVM, libvirt and QEMU tools.

4.  System Upgrade

4.1.  Remote Update via "zypper dup"

When upgrading from openSUSE 12.1 (or older), openSSH connections will be
closed when the new openssh package is upgraded. If you are upgrading with
"zypper dup" over SSH, run "zypper dup" inside a resumable terminal
multiplexer (e.g., "screen" or "tmux") so that you can re-connect easily,
or at least immune to connection loss (e.g., via "nohup").

4.2.  sysvinit Deprecated

Some desktop components depend on services provided by systemd only. So
while openSUSE 12.2 still has basic support for booting a system with
sysvinit as fallback, sysvinit nevertheless is considered deprecated and
probably even faulty or broken in some regard. If you have any issues with
a sysvinit booted system, use systemd before filing bug reports.

4.3.  mount and losetup Dropped Support for cryptoloop

cryptoloop has known weaknesses and is therefore considered obsolete in
favor of dm-crypt since years. mount (e.g., via /etc/fstab) and losetup now
finally dropped support for cryptoloop. This means old fstab entries that
use cryptoloop to access encrypted containers no longer work this way. The
containers can still be accessed with dm-crypt (/etc/crypttab), though.
Refer to http://en.opensuse.org/Encrypted_Filesystems for examples how to
use to the new method.

4.4.  Mounting Encrypted Partitions Using systemd

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

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

to

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

5.  Technical

5.1.  Initializing Graphics with KMS (Kernel Mode Setting)

With openSUSE 11.3 we switched to KMS (Kernel Mode Setting) for Intel, ATI
and NVIDIA graphics, which now is our default. If you encounter problems
with the KMS driver support (intel, radeon, nouveau), disable KMS by adding
nomodeset to the kernel boot command line. To set this permanently using
Grub 2, the default boot loader, add it to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT
kernel default load options line in your /etc/default/grub text file as
root and running the terminal command

sudo /usr/sbin/grub2-mkconfig --output=/boot/grub2/grub.cfg

for the changes to take effect. Else, for Grub Legacy, add it to the kernel
command line in /boot/grub/menu.lst, also done as root. This option makes
sure the appropriate kernel module (intel, radeon, nouveau) is loaded with
modeset=0 in initrd, i.e. KMS is disabled.

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

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

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

5.2.  Booting with Deprecated sysvinit

By default, openSUSE now boots using systemd. In case of trouble, you can
try to switch back to the deprecated sysvinit way by pressing the F5 key on
the boot. For more information about limitations when booting with
sysvinit, see Section  4.2,    sysvinit Deprecated   .

5.3.  systemd: Supplying Service Start-up Parameters

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

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

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

5.4. systemd: System Shutdown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5.7. Auto-mounting USB Media

Gnome and Xfce now use udisks2 to automatically mount USB media under /run/
media/$USER. KDE still uses udisks version 1 and mounts USB media under /
media.

5.8. Timezone Information in /etc/adjtime

The third line of /etc/adjtime now contains information whether your BIOS
clock runs on UTC or in local timezone (previously stored in HWCLOCK in /
etc/sysconfig/clock).

If /etc/adjtime contains wrong drift information (for example after fixing
date and time with ntpdate or have ntpd running), set the variable
USE_ADJUST to "no" in /etc/sysconfig/clock.

5.9. GNU tar Defaults to Creating POSIX-compliant Archives

GNU tar now defaults to --format=posix and create POSIX-compliant archives
with PAX extended headers. Check whether your scripts and applications are
compatible with this format.

The former behavior (and upstream default) can be restored by setting the
environment:

TAR_OPTIONS='--format=gnu'

or

TAR_OPTIONS='--pax-option=delete=[ac]time*'

