Version:
12.2.9 (2012-10-22)
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.
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.
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").
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.
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.
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
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.
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”.
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>
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.
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.
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.
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.
With Kernel 3.4 there are two ways to have partitions for loopback devices. The first is with max_part and the second is with the -P parameter to losetup. They behave slightly differently since -P will dynamically allocate minor numbers for each device (including adding or removing them on the fly with blockdev --rereadpt). Using the max_part parameter causes each loop device to allocate that many minor numbers for each device.
So when you use max_part=8 and do not change max_loop, which defaults to 8, you are using all of the allocated minor numbers with the first device.
The solution is either to use -P or to also use max_loop.
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.
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*'