we recently had to upgrade all machines from 10.3 and 11.1 to 11.2 because of software compatibility issues.
Now that 11.2 is up and running I keep having very annoying problems:
.Xauthority
User home directories are mounted with NFS. When trying to use kdesu (e.g. to start YAST) lock files (.Xauthority-*) are created and the program fails. The pnly solution is the remove the files by hand and try again. Sometimes it will work and swomtimes it won’t. Interestingly that only happens on the local machine; ssh -X some.other.machine works fine.
YAST
YAST continuously complains about broken pipes (either gzip or grep) when starting the software management.
MP3
Playing mp3s seems to plainly have disappeared in 11.2 (64bit).
I tried a few other distros (live CDs) and none seems to have all those issues.
Any help would be appreciated because I still think openSUSE is a good solution for a system that goes a bit beyond a single PC at home.
I might be able to help in one of the 3 cases you mentioned.
But first, let me put my moderator hat on and say your title was PATHETIC. If you want your problems solved, then 3 posts were in order, with an appropriate title that summarizes in a half dozen words the problem, such as “Mp3 not playing on 11.2 (64-bit)”. The title “mildly annoyed at 11.2” is bad because it will not get the attention of those who like to solve technical problems, but rather it will get the attention of those who like to debate with ranters.
Now reference this:
mp3’s play fine with openSUSE. Its VERY simple to get them working and I have them playing typically within minutes after an openSUSE-11.2 fresh install.
There are MANY ways to do this.
The way I employ is immediately after a fresh openSUSE-11.2 install is to set up my software repositories with 4 and only 4 repositories. ONLY 4. No others. That is important (for new users). Three of those 4 are the official OSS, Non-OSS, and Update. The 4th is Packman. Just those 4. The first 3 are setup by default, so all one has to do is follow the guidance here Repositories/11.2 - openSUSE-Community to add the 4th (packman). Again, add NO OTHERS. If one needs an application that is on another (5th) repository, then add that 5th repository, install the application, and remove the 5th repository. This will keep new users out of trouble. In particular, for multimedia, do NOT add videolan for any application other than libdvdcss because videolan puts codecs in places that packman packaged players can not find them (and visa versa).
Now once the 4 repositories are in place, go to YasT > Software > Software management and install libxine1, xine-ui, libffmpeg0 (which picks up codecs as dependencies) and for KDE also the phonon-xine-backend (I may have the name wrong). Then ensure KDE> Configure Desktop > Multimedia is setup to use the xine backend. If necessary run xine directly (possible since xine-ui is installed) to adjust the xine audio settings.
But overall its fast. I typically have mp3 playing within 5 minutes of an openSUSE install.
Sorry about the somewhat provocative title … but I was actually fairly annoyed – mainly about the software management issues. But come on, the post was not written in an offensive manner, was it?
Usually I need more than the standard repositories (especially the science repository). Some praise to the 11.2 release at this point: I could install all required software from within YaST, instead of compiling things myself. Just a note: we are not really NEW users here – I have been using SuSE since its very beginning actually.
Anyway, I have now changed the repositories from “download.opensuse.org” to actual mirrors addresses and that seems to remove most of my software management problems. Is there any known issue with the automatic redirection?
The Packman repository, thankfully, is now available as well and I guess that should sort out the MP3 issues in the long rung.
What remains is the bizarre .Xauthority behaviour, but that is a minor issue since I have a workaround.
It’s possible that for some users (and countries) they get redirected to a slower mirror than you would expect, one possible solution is to use a well known mirror close to your own proximity and add it manually instead of using d.o.o service.
Also IPv6 can still cause issues with poorly configured name servers, you might want to disable it unless you need it.