N00b to SUSE, help required.
 

Hey there people.

Well after recent issues with my notebook, I decided to wipe it clean and retrieve my 7gb recovery partition. I also decided to try and install Suse Linux before going back to my good old Ubuntu set-up. I must say that the look and feel of SUSE in my opinion is better. Likewise I think I prefer KDE to Gnome, or maybe its the change that I like. For some reason I believe that SUSE Linux has done a better job and works better with my hardware. But to be honest I haven't used it long enough to make a conclusion.

There are some problems I have already encountered. I'm at a desperate time with regards to University examinations and coursework, so I have little time to start reading in-depth guides. However I'm hoping that I can receive help here, so that I can work around these problems.

Firstly, when I was using Ubuntu (and of course Gnome), to reach my work and uni userspaces, I would open a folder and type "sftp://username@host.blahblah.com". I have tried a few things in SUSE, but I can't seem to get into my spaces. I don't think any of the methods I tried were near correct to be honest, but I tried!

Secondly, after going to Nvidias website, I read/skimmed through the howto on installing the drivers. Once I have added the source, and I select the packages I want to install, installation failes. I get the following error message when I try to run updates,
The last issue of importance is that I want to install and be able to program in Java. To be specific I need JDK 1.5 so I can complete coursework and prepare for my exams. Is installing it similar to how one would install it on Ubuntu (actually on Ubuntu I simply used Automatix2)? I searched for the pacakge under YaST but I don't think I saw the package I needed. I couldn't pacakge/s were suitable.

Please excuse me as my vision is very blurred at the moment, the font is tiny and it is 3:20 am here. I hate to ask for so much help (without putting much effort) but I'm (yet again) at a point where the help is needed and time is short (due to exams :( ).

Like always help and support is appreciated. Especially in this scenario whereby I've asked a set of q's in one thread! Thank you very much.

Suhaib.

firstly: What did you try to get to your university workspaces? What happened? (How, technically, are the university workspaces accessed anyway? Are they samba shares, network filesystems, what?)

secondly: do not install nvidia drivers from nvidia if you can help it. Use YaST to install them. http://en.opensuse.org/NVIDIA ... however, you do not actually need the proprietary driver unless you want 3D acceleration. The "nv" driver is sufficient.

thirdly: you can install Sun Java JRE etc via YaST. http://en.opensuse.org/Java

Note the similarity to you Ubuntu days: one need only include the appropriate repositories and everything works like magic.

To be honest I'm not sure whether my work and university workshares are on Samba or not. I remember helping out at work when it was being done, and I think it's NFS that we are using.

When I read the NVIDIA howto lastnight, it stated the same, to use YaST instead. That's what I couldn't get working. Never mind I'll try your methods at work today. Thanks!

Please also note that the method of installation is not the problem. The problem is that when I try and run updates of any kind, whether they are system updates, or those outlined above. I receive error messages under the title "Dependancy Resolution Failed".

Are you attempting to update through the Internet via YaST? It sounds as if the location for which you are attempting to acquire updates is either incorrect or not available. Have you attempted to add different update mirrors to YaST? There is a sticky at the top of this forum that covers this aspect.

I removed the default mirrors and added some more. It seems to be working now, since it doesn't say that I need 200+ updates anymore.

EDIT: I still get problems.

There was an error in installation source initialization.

ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/10.1/: Cannot create the installation source
http://ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/linux/suse/update/10.1: Cannot create the installation source
http://ftp.skynet.be/pub/packman/suse/10.1//: Cannot create the installation source
http://download.nvidia.com/novell/: Cannot create the installation source
http://ftp.skynet.be/pub/ftp.suse.co...update/10.1//: Cannot create the installation source

I'll check the sticky, thanks!

I skimmed through the stickies, which were pretty old and didn't aid me much. Oh well.

Are you using SuSE 10.1? If not, then perhaps the mirrors are unable to provide updates if you are using, for instance, openSuSE 10.2. I don't know if this would matter anyway, but I've seen stranger things occur... :)

As far as the Nvidia, I've found the opposite on 5 machines now with openSuse 10.2. Only get simple driver installation by compiling the Nvidia kernel. Very easy process, takes me 3 minutes if you have kernel-source installed and have the file downloaded. Through yast, with anything but a standard CRT monitor, I've had hours of trying to tweak my xorg.conf to get it to work, but the Nvidia proprietary drivers seams to work very well regardless of which widescreen.

Very simple process:

1)Make sure you've installed "kernel-source" from yast2->software
2)Download the file from Nvidia for your architechture

http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

3)go to terminal

>su -
>type root password
>init 3
make sure you log in as root

4)Backup your xorg.conf incase of crash

>cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.backup (do reverse if dead screen on restart)

4)go to folder you downloaded Nvidia file to

>cd /home/myname/installfiles/

5)Run binary installer

>sh NVidia-xxx-111-lalala.run

say yes to everything

6)start Xserver again

>init 5

Should see Nvidia splash screen just before KDE login menu

Also, here are my key repositories(I only use the SMART package manager software for installation and update):

http://download.opensuse.org/distrib...2/repo/non-oss
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/update/10.2/
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/10.2/repo/oss


Last, to fix your tiny fonts in Firefox: While in Firefox, go to edit->preferences-> then the "content" tab where you can set your default font size.

Good luck!

Some people have better luck with SMART packet manager.
http://dev-loki.blogspot.com/2006/05...t-on-suse.html

Also see:
http://www.suseforums.net/index.php?showtopic=18464

Thanks. For the help. I followed another guide which told me to kill a program called zen (i think) and remove it. The method I used didn't work, but eventually I was able to update my system with 1.3GB of updates. However I still haven't tried to download specific packages that I need. One of the repos doesn't seem to work so I guess I'll scrap that. I still haven't set up Java (JDK) or installed the Nvidia drivers, but hopefully I'll get round to it tonight (after my exam discrete maths).

Ah - sure, using the Xen kernel would make a difference yeah. I don't know how SUSE handles this, but, usually, when you have a Xen enabled kernel available, there is another in the grub menu which is non-xen.

When I was running the 1.3GB update, it did (I think) replace my kernal. Mind you it also tried to install all my software again lol. Is there any way to shorten the time it takes YaST to "read package information"?

Yep, I can finally run and CHOOSE to install packages. As instructed by harryc from opensuse forums, I ran these commands-

killall zen-updater
/etc/init.d/novell-zmd stop
rm -f /var/lib/zmd/zmd.db
/etc/init.d/novell-zmd start
zen-updater &
rpm --rebuilddb

nvidia: if installing from the repository doesn't work right off the bat, don't beat your head against the wall; download the installer directly from nvidia's website and use that. this also avoids having to worry about errors from dependencies etc, because that installer doesn't use the package management system.

why do the instructions at suse & nvidia say to use yast instead? theoretically it's much easier; but if it doesn't work, the other method is fine.

zen/xen: if i understand this right, Zen and Xen are totally different things; "Xen" is a Virtualization Kernel which lets you run other virtual OS's ( yes? no?), while "Zen" is an administration and package management system from Novell whose problems are well documented elsewhere; anyway, harryc's advice is probably good.

sftp: i guess that's secure FTP. i know this works with regular ftp, but haven't tried with sftp. if it worked for you in ubuntu/gnome, log into a gnome session in suse and try there. the same thing ought to work in Konqueror (the file browser/web browser for kde). if it doesn't, you want to look for info on the secure ftp protocol in konqueror.

Thanks and sorry, I forgot to update this thread to mention that the problems are sorted. To use sftp I just typed the protocol in konqueror, i initially thought that konqueror was automatically putting the http protocol in front of my addresses (hence I assumed that konqueror supports none other than http)! This is since, it automatically appears when you type any address below the location bar(like when you begin to type a URL you have visited).