Hi all, finally taken the plunge

English Open Chat
1

into this strange mystic world called Linux.

It’s taken a couple of weeks and a trashed hard drive (that I will get back somehow, it’s only a Windows throwing its weight about kind of trash) but I’ve finally got my first ever go at using a Linux distro up and running.

So far it has been a fun but slightly bumpy journey. It took a while to decide which distro I wanted to start with, as I wanted something that would be reasonably stable in use but which would need me to get my hands dirty every so often. There also needed to be a good community that would offer help if and when needed, but not necessarily spoonfeed information as that is not a good way to learn.

So, over the weekend I now have OpenSuse residing happily on its own hard drive and dual booting comfortably with Win 7, using Grub but booting to Windows by default - just in case any of those sneaky auto updates forget they are not meant to happen and decide to install themselves and reboot the machine.

I’ve got VLC, Amarok and smplayer working as expected, I’ve learnt a bit about repositories, super user, using super user to copy files within the GUI environment, configuring a network printer and having to add the driver to CUPS after downloading it from the manufacturer’s website.

All I can say is THANK YOU ALL, for without the help and advice that I found by searching the forum, I think I’d still be trying to work out why I could not get Amarok to work, let alone anything else.

I just hope I can repay the help in the future.

2

Welcome to openSUSE and to openSUSE forums.

Our forum is made up of unpaid volunteer enthusiasts, and if you have problems where a brief effort on your part fails, please feel free to post in our appropriate forum subarea and ask for assistance.

Don’t forget to read the stickies at the top of each subforum area. They may infact answer your question.

Also, take a look at our extensive new user how tos: How To/FAQ Forums especially:

In many respect Software repositories make GNU/Linux very powerful, and I confess it was years before I started properly using repositories to obtain my GNU/Linux software. In the case of openSUSE I typically recommend only these repositories :

  • OSS - the official SuSE-GmbH free open source repository (free as in the free software foundation definition of free)
  • NON-OSS - the official SuSE-GmbH non-free non-open source repository (free as in free beer, but not free as per the free software foundation definition of free).
  • Update - the official SuSE-GmbH security updates to OSS and Non-OSS. Typically SuSE-GmbH provide updates for security reasons, but not for new features. There are other ways to get rpms of updates for new features
  • Packman - the largest 3rd party community repository for openSUSE.

There are MANY other repositories, but I recommend you keep your list trimmed to only these 4. If you must add more for a package, add them, install the package(s) and then immediately remove the other repositories. That will keep you away from all sorts of difficulty.

Be VERY cautious of the single-click install. It can leave repositories in your repository list that will cause problems. I never user the single-click myself. I prefer to add repositories via the ‘zypper’ command or via YaST (the excellent openSUSE configuration tool).

When looking for new software I recommend you look here: software.opensuse.org: Search Results Be certain to select your openSUSE version and click on options and show all users repositories. That won’t help you find Packman packaged apps, and so to find Packman packaged apps go here: PackMan :: Search for packages

There is a LOT more we can show, but if you can look at this links (especially the links inside the how to’s) then things should hopefully go ok.

3

On 06/22/2011 04:06 PM, Grockle wrote:
>
> into this strange mystic world called Linux.
> All I can say is THANK YOU ALL — I just hope I can repay the help in the future.
>

-=Welcome=- i just love to see someone arrive here who is willing to
face this learning curve as a challenge (rather than a barrier) and the
process as a potential learning experience rather than one big frustration…

thank you for picking openSUSE!

i hope you enjoy your stay long enough to help others also willing to
help themselves!!

just let me recommend you move slowly and thoughtfully as experiment in
your new environment…there are lots of habits, techniques and
procedures built up during your time with non-free software that can and
will damage your system, or at least have you wasting time undoing bad
doings…

note: this place is neither strange nor mystic! as proof i offer this
very true story: i bought the machine i am typing on now on a month or
so ago…it came with Win7 installed…i booted it and having last owned
a “Windows machine” in 1995 i can tell you that i was in a confusing
world both very strange and full of mystical frustrations…

it took me days of updates and reboots (lost count of both but it was
HOURS and HOURS) to get a machine that would let me download and burn a
linux install disk so i could get back to comfortable, controllable,
dependable, non-strange and non-mystical nirvana!!

after two days i learned NOT to shutdown because every shutdown and
reboot was another hour or three of “Do not shut down your machine blah
blah blah. . .”

–
DD
Caveat
Hardware
Software
22 June: Sunrise 4:38 AM, Sunset 10:10 PM

4

I’m thouroughly enjoying myself tinkering about. I’m an old git who has just taken his HNC in Computing Tech Support, got a very decent grade and am going back next term as an even more mature student tro do my HND.

It’s very scary that out of 22 of us, all the top performers in the exam were mature students and that all but 1 fails were under 20.

Thanks for those two search links, they’ve already proved useful.

Just had my first crash, instant black screen and mouse pointer frozen at bottom middle of screen. Is there any logging I can look at to see if I can find out what caused it?

5

Yep, you’ve just got to love Windows and the clever git that forced millions of people to pay to be constant beta testers.

6

Thats not nice ! … before pressing the hardware reset, you could try pressing on the keyboard <ctrl><alt><F1> if the keyboard and os are not frozen that should take you to a full screen login. From there you can login to the login prompt and do various things, such as restarting the pc (with root permissions) with:


shutdown -r now

or halting (switching off) the pc with


shutdown -h now

There are lots of log files in /var/log/ directory. Typically /var/log/messages has lots of information. It requires root permissions to look at.

7

Cool, thanks. I’ve already warm rebooted so I’ll use that info if/when it happens again. It’s quite strange getting used to using command line again. I’ll investigate those log files later on.

8

You also called yourself by an interesting English term of slang. Lets hope you make yourself a resident here and not so much a tourist :smiley:

9

Why not looking into /var/log/messages now? Its entries are chronologic and each line begins with the date, so you could check the time the crash happened. It sounds like a bit of a serious problem.

10

Can’t get into messages for some reason, but can get into Warn - is that the same thing? If so, these are the only entries around the time of the crash

Jun 22 16:42:38 linux-je75 pulseaudio[3150]: ratelimit.c: 678 events suppressed
Jun 22 16:51:04 linux-je75 kernel: [82265.099087] [drm:radeon_dvi_detect] *ERROR* DVI-I-1: probed a monitor but no|invalid EDID
11

Can’t get into messages for some reason …]

That is because /var/log/messages is restricted, only root may read it (another important thing in Linux / UNIX: user management and rights). You will be able to read it as root.

Two ways how I’d do it:

  • open a terminal and become root:
kalle@hoppers:~> su -
Passwort: #your password is not reflected by dots or the like, type it "blind"!]
hoppers:~ #

I am root now (the ‘#’ indicates that). Then I would like to read the file /var/log/messages. The command to read a file is ‘cat’:

hoppers:~ # cat /var/log/messages

…but: this file can be huge, so one might want to use a pager. I am using a pager called ‘less’:

hoppers:~ # less /var/log/messages

‘less’ lets you scroll through this log via arrow keys. Quit it with ‘q’.

Another approach would be filtering the file for a certain date. The command used here is ‘grep’:

hoppers:~ # grep 'Jun 22' /var/log/messages

Jun 22 00:37:51 hoppers rsyslogd: -- MARK --
Jun 22 00:38:03 hoppers smartd[3768]: Device: /dev/sda [SAT], SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 107 to 108
Jun 22 00:38:03 hoppers smartd[3768]: Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 111 to 112
Jun 22 01:08:03 hoppers smartd[3768]: Device: /dev/sda [SAT], SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 108 to 109
Jun 22 01:08:03 hoppers smartd[3768]: Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 112 to 111
Jun 22 01:38:03 hoppers smartd[3768]: Device: /dev/sda [SAT], SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 109 to 110
Jun 22 01:46:13 hoppers kernel: [47345.182896] hub 1-3:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 3
Jun 22 01:46:16 hoppers kernel: [47348.294419] usb 1-3.3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6
Jun 22 01:46:16 hoppers kernel: [47348.370683] usb 1-3.3: New USB device found, idVendor=0781, idProduct=74d1
Jun 22 01:46:16 hoppers kernel: [47348.370693] usb 1-3.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
Jun 22 01:46:16 hoppers kernel: [47348.370699] usb 1-3.3: Product: SanDisk Sansa Clip+
Jun 22 01:46:16 hoppers kernel: [47348.370704] usb 1-3.3: Manufacturer: SanDisk
Jun 22 01:46:16 hoppers kernel: [47348.370709] usb 1-3.3: SerialNumber: D10FFC0C8032C1A80000000000000000
Jun 22 01:46:16 hoppers mtp-probe: checking bus 1, device 6: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:13.5/usb1/1-3/1-3.3"
...]

…the output is much longer, so a pager could be useful here too - therefore I will →pipe the output to ‘less’.

hoppers:~ # grep 'Jun 22' /var/log/messages | less

…and scroll to the exact time when whatever happened that puzzles me.

To become a regular user again (remember: only become root when necessary!), type ‘exit’ or hit Ctrl + D.

Hope all that didn’t confuse you. The shell is a very useful tool. It has a learning curve being a bit steeper than a GUI, but it’s worth it.

12

On 06/22/2011 10:06 PM, Grockle wrote:
>
> Can’t get into messages for some reason, but can get into Warn - is that
> the same thing? If so, these are the only entries around the time of the
> crash
>
> Code:
> --------------------
> Jun 22 16:42:38 linux-je75 pulseaudio[3150]: ratelimit.c: 678 events suppressed
> Jun 22 16:51:04 linux-je75 kernel: [82265.099087] [drm:radeon_dvi_detect] ERROR DVI-I-1: probed a monitor but no|invalid EDID
> --------------------
>
>
no, they are not the same…

i don’t know how you are trying to view it, but you can only do that as
root…and, never log into kde/gnome or any other *nix-like desktop
environment (DE)…so, i don’t know which DE you are using, so i give
two instructions, where appropriate

while logged into KDE or gnome as yourself, a normal user

  1. hold down Alt and momentarly press F2, a “run command” (blank) will
    pop up…in KDE at the top of the screen…(no idea where in gnome),
    type into that blank and then press enter

  2. for KDE


kdesu kedit
  1. for gnome

gnomesu gedit

  1. a pop-up will ask for your root password, give it…

  2. then a root powered text editor (not a lot unlike notebook) will pop up…

  3. nav to the file you wanna look at and follow your nose…

  4. if you find something which might interesting (READ it) around the
    time of your crash (look for words like ‘error’, ‘warning’ or ‘panic’)
    you can highlight and copy paste back to this thread…WAIT, do not
    paste it back to here…this is a chat area, instead paste it into a
    NEW thread in a help area, with a descriptive subject…probably
    install/boot/login (since we don’t know if it is an application or
    hardware problem…

suggestion: do NOT change the file…if you accidentally do, don’t
worry…just do NOT save it when you exit…

  1. when finished with the editor, i suggest you close it…do NOT leave
    a root powered editor laying around (unless your memory is better than
    mine) or eventually you will probably wreck something…

  2. Have a lot of fun.

–
DD
Caveat
Hardware
Software
22 June: Sunrise 4:38 AM, Sunset 10:10 PM

13

Problem moved to First crash, can’t see anything wrong

Thanks for the help and the pointers, I got grep to work in a terminal but kedit failed with a cannot execute pop up.

I’m using 11.4 with KDE if that makes any difference.

14

I am not sure what DenverD was referring to. I don’t think I ever stumbled over an editor called ‘kedit’. Typical KDE-editors are KWrite (simple) and Kate (more on the advanced side).

Edit: Obviously there’s a an editor called ‘KEDIT’ - for Windows… :smiley:

15

On 06/23/2011 12:06 AM, Grockle wrote:
>
> but kedit failed with a cannot execute pop up

sorry, brain freeze…should have been

kdesu kwrite

try it…

–
DD
Caveat
Hardware
Software
23 June: Sunrise 4:36 AM, Sunset 10:03 PM

16

Hehe, I got kwrite to work as expected but was going a bit crazy trying to find kedit. I did start wondering if I was doing something wrong or was missing a needed repository .