openSUSE 13.1 Release Notes

Version: 13.1.6 (2013-11-07)

Copyright © 2013 SUSE LLC

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.

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1. Miscellaneous
2. Installation

    2.1. For Detailed Installation Information

3. General

    3.1. openSUSE Documentation
    3.2. Dropped YaST Modules
    3.3. UEFI—Unified Extensible Firmware Interface
    3.4. Adobe Reader (acroread) and Other PDF Readers

4. System Upgrade

    4.1. Upgrading with Zypper (dup) Requires /etc/fstab Cleanup
    4.2. SYSLOG_DAEMON Variable Removed

5. Technical

    5.1. Initializing Graphics with KMS (Kernel Mode Setting)
    5.2. Samba version 4.1
    5.3. Configuring Postfix
    5.4. xinetd: Logging to the System Log
    5.5. Apache Version 2.4
    5.6. tomcat: Logging to the System Log
    5.7. Darktable: Refreshing Cache Files Needed
    5.8. KDE and Bluetooth

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 Section 3.1, “openSUSE
Documentation”.

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.

Find the documentation in /usr/share/doc/manual/opensuse-manuals_$LANG
after installing the package opensuse-startup_$LANG, or online on http://
doc.opensuse.org.

3.2. Dropped YaST Modules

The following YaST modules were obsolete and rarely used these days:

  • yast2-autofs

  • yast2-dbus-client

  • yast2-dirinstall

  • yast2-fingerprint-reader

  • yast2-irda

  • yast2-mouse

  • yast2-phone-services

  • yast2-power-management

  • yast2-profile-manager

  • yast2-sshd

  • yast2-tv

The main reason for dropping was to decrease the maintenance effort and
better focus on other more used modules.

3.3. UEFI—Unified Extensible Firmware Interface

Prior to installing openSUSE on a system that boots using UEFI (Unified
Extensible Firmware Interface) you are urgently advised to check for any
firmware updates the hardware vendor recommends and, if available, to
install such an update. A pre-installed Windows 8 is a strong indication
that your system boots using UEFI.

Background: Some UEFI firmware has bugs that cause it to break if too much
data gets written to the UEFI storage area. Nobody really knows how much
"too much" is, though. openSUSE minimizes the risk by not writing more than
the bare minimum required to boot the OS. The minimum means telling the
UEFI firmware about the location of the openSUSE boot loader. Upstream
Linux Kernel features that use the UEFI storage area for storing boot and
crash information (pstore) have been disabled by default. Nevertheless it
is recommended to install any firmware updates the hardware vendor
recommends.

3.4. Adobe Reader (acroread) and Other PDF Readers

Adobe no longer provides (security) updates for Adobe Reader (acroread).
Therefore the acroread package was dropped from the distribution to protect
openSUSE users.

openSUSE includes various PDF viewing tools like Okular, Evince, and
xpdf-poppler. These tools are actively maintained and get security fixes
from openSUSE and their upstream authors.

4. System Upgrade

4.1. Upgrading with Zypper (dup) Requires /etc/fstab Cleanup

When upgrading with zypper dup (YaST upgrade handles it automatically)
users should remove the following /etc/fstab entries if present:

tmpfs   /dev/shm
devpts  /dev/pts
sysfs   /sys sysfs
proc    /proc proc

This is especially important for Gnome users, otherwise the Gnome terminal
will fail with "grantpt failed: Operation not permitted". These mount
points are managed by systemd and should no longer be present in /etc/
fstab.

4.2. SYSLOG_DAEMON Variable Removed

The SYSLOG_DAEMON variable has been removed. Previously, it was used to
select the syslog daemon. Starting with openSUSE 12.3, only one syslog
implementation can be installed at a time on a system and will be selected
automatically for usage.

For details, see the syslog(8) manpage.

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. Samba version 4.1

Samba version 4.1 shipped with openSUSE 13.1 does not include support to
operate as an Active Directory style domain controller. This functionality
is currently disabled, as it lacks integration with system-wide MIT
Kerberos.

5.3. Configuring Postfix

With openSUSE 12.3, SuSEconfig.postfix was renamed as /usr/sbin/
config.postfix. If you set sysconfig variables in /etc/sysconfig/postfix or
/etc/sysconfig/mail, you must manually run /usr/sbin/config.postfix as
root.

5.4. xinetd: Logging to the System Log

The new default for xinetd changes the default target for logging from /var
/log/xinetd.log to the system log. This means all messages from xinetd will
appear in a system log as a facility daemon and log level info.

If you want to switch back the the old way, find a proper snippet in /etc/
xinetd.conf. The template for the logrotate script for xinetd.log can be
found in /usr/share/doc/packages/xinetd/logrotate.

5.5. Apache Version 2.4

Apache 2.4 features various changes in the configuration files. For more
information about upgrading from a previous version, see http://
httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/upgrading.html.

5.6. tomcat: Logging to the System Log

The tomcat startup scripts doe no longer write the output to /var/log/
tomcat/catalina.out. All messages are now redirected to the system log via
tomcat.service (tomcat-jsvc.service) and log level info.

5.7. Darktable: Refreshing Cache Files Needed

If upgrading from a previous release to openSUSE 13.1 old cache files may
no longer work. In this case removing ~/.cache/darktable/mipmaps is
necessary.

5.8. KDE and Bluetooth

The Bluetooth stack is provided by Bluez 5 (a major, backwards-incompatbile
version), a necessary upgrade for GNOME desktop and some other components
of the base system. Unfortunately, the KDE workspace only supports Bluez
version 4 in its currently-released versions.

Therefore, the openSUSE KDE community team offers an unofficial Bluedevil
package providing at least basic functionality such as device pairing or
support for bluetooth mice; Some other features are known not to work jet,
like file transfer.

For the moment, bugs should not be filed against Bluetooth support in KDE
as the Bluez 5 port of Bluedevil is still ongoing.

