openSUSE 11.3 and 11.4 share a swap partition (although this presents a problem in hibernation/resumption), and have happily co-existed for some time. I just installed GNOME 3 on the 11.4 platform, with some minor problems.
After shutting down 11.4 w/ GNOME3, booting of 11.3 (KDE) was somewhat messed: workspaces were reduced to one (1), window decorations were those of GNOME 2 (yes, GNOME 2 as installed on 11.3, NOT GNOME 3), and all windows were named “xxxxx (as sean)” (such as “bash (as sean)” or “gkrellm (as sean)”) (where “sean” is the username). Curiously, the window background and widgets were KDE, as was the menu.
A clean logout and login seemed to restore the desktop. Assuming a fluke, I repeated the sequence, with the same results. I re-booted 11.4/GNOME 3, shut it down and re-booted 11.3 with “noresume” in GRUB, and all was as it should be.
My guess is that GNOME3 is leaving something(s) in the swap partition that is confusing 11.3 (KDE). This is not a critical problem for me, but I think it should be reported. Question: should it be reported against : a) GNOME 3, b) 11.4, c) 11.3, d) KDE 4.6 or e) all or any combination of the above ?
openSUSE 11.3 and 11.4 share a swap partition (although this presents a problem in hibernation/resumption), and have happily co-existed for some time. I just installed GNOME 3 on the 11.4 platform, with some minor problems.
After shutting down 11.4 w/ GNOME3, booting of 11.3 (KDE) was somewhat messed: workspaces were reduced to one (1), window decorations were those of GNOME 2 (yes, GNOME 2 as installed on 11.3, NOT GNOME 3), and all windows were named “xxxxx (as sean)” (such as “bash (as sean)” or “gkrellm (as sean)”) (where “sean” is the username). Curiously, the window background and widgets were KDE, as was the menu.
A clean logout and login seemed to restore the desktop. Assuming a fluke, I repeated the sequence, with the same results. I re-booted 11.4/GNOME 3, shut it down and re-booted 11.3 with “noresume” in GRUB, and all was as it should be.
My guess is that GNOME3 is leaving something(s) in the swap partition that is confusing 11.3 (KDE). This is not a critical problem for me, but I think it should be reported. Question: should it be reported against : a) GNOME 3, b) 11.4, c) 11.3, d) KDE 4.6 or e) all or any combination of the above ?
It is my personnel thoughts, that if you wish to use hibernate with two different openSUSE versions installed, it would be best to maintain separate swap partitions for each OS. They are small in the over all scheme of things. Once you Hibernate, you need to reload the same OS version again on restart. Now if Hibernate simply does not work properly, without regard to the OS version loaded, it would be an openSUSE issue OR, if it came up only after installing GNOME 3, it might be a GNOME issue. Hibernate always wants to come back to life in the very same world that it went to sleep in anyway, which has always been true. Think about doing a Hibernate outside of a docking station and then waking up plugged into one. Just even this change would/could cause Hibernate to fail to restart.
I agree on the separate swaps. In my original post, I was not performing hibernation on either 11.3 or 11.4, merely a simple shutdown and re-boot.
The GRUB entries show “resume=<swap partition>”, so even on a straight boot, is a “resumption” from hibernation attempted ? If so, that might partially explain the posted problem.
11.4 w/GNOME 3 did not attempt hibernation (have not attempted such, yet). Just a simple shut down, and reboot to 11.3.
I think I will allocate a new, separate swap partition for 11.4 for the nonce.
On 2011-05-28 18:06, SeanMc98 wrote:
>
> openSUSE 11.3 and 11.4 share a swap partition (although this presents a
> problem in hibernation/resumption), and have happily co-existed for some
> time. I just installed GNOME 3 on the 11.4 platform, with some minor
> problems.
Cross-hibernation is bad idea. You risk mounting again a partition that is
already mounted in the other system, resulting in an fsck, and later crash
of the 1st system and possibly trashing that partition. The damage can be
brutal (I have done it).
> I re-booted
> 11.4/GNOME 3, shut it down and re-booted 11.3 with “noresume” in GRUB,
> and all was as it should be.
No surprise.
> My guess is that GNOME3 is leaving something(s) in the swap partition
> that is confusing 11.3 (KDE). This is not a critical problem for me,
> but I think it should be reported. Question: should it be reported
> against : a) GNOME 3, b) 11.4, c) 11.3, d) KDE 4.6 or e) all or any
> combination of the above ?
No way! As simple as that.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
To a first approximation, hibernation dumps system memory to disk and resume reloads that memory and expects all of the disk pointers to still be valid. Personally, I don’t trust hibernation and I turn it off.
I suppose that hibernation could store a root disk identifier and a last change timestamp for that disk partition. Then resume could check all of that before allowing the resume. I suppose such a change would have to be a kernel change. Whether the kernel maintainers are interested, is a different issue.
Best advice is to avoid hibernation. And if you absolutely must use it, be sure to resume the same system with nothing changed on disk in the mean time.
No. I am adventurous, occasionally daring, and sometimes bold, but not insane ! I setup a shared swap (in this incarnation of my 11.4 test bed), perhaps against mine own better judgement. As I write this (from a separate PC), I am allocating a separate swap for 11.4. Although I have NOT attempted hibernation from the 11.4 / GNOME 3 install, the presence of “resume=” in the generated GRUB entries has given me pause.
In fact, I will probably give each distro its own swap … at 4GB a throw, it is really no significant allocation.