Installation problems OpenSUSE without internet 11.3 x86-32

English Install/Boot/Login
1

hi,

Great to have an openSUSE distribution, despite NOVELL taking it over.

AMD only supports very few distributions for its gpgpu software. OpenSUSE is one of them. Congrats to be one of the supported distro’s by AMD.

Obviously developing mathematical factorisation software (splitting numbers into prime numbers) you use airgapped security machines. They are not online.

Then there is a number of problems with OpenSUSE. Basically not much works without online connection.

I’m using openSUSE DVD i586 build 0702.001

First description of hardware.

One of the machines with a lot of problems code box an old Tyan S2466 with 2x MP2800.

It is a 32 bits machine.

At install i basically select really a lot of stuff. Took KDE and added about everything else, except for GNOME.

Not that i have any preference there. Just randomly took KDE.

So all development selected etc.

Installation goes ok from DVD.

After first boot problems begin.

DVD no longer recognized: “unknown block device”. Somehow it does know it’s a 4GB sized blockdevice. Online it wants to download something for it. Not sure what.

What do i need to get off the DVD to get it to work?

It wants for everything the internet and each boot complains loud about this.
Especially different KDE applets.

Now that’s annoying, not a crashing bug yet.

Real serious is that it has no driver for the ‘block device’ (how did we manage to install from the DVD huh?) installed by default.

To explain the problem even better: it installed itself from that DVD.

Yet it has no driver for it. It wants to search the non-existing internet to solve the problem.

Serious installation bug?

How do i turn off all those complaints about not being online, i don’t want to get hacked by every consultant on the entire planet obviously who one day contributed a driver that’s by accident installed (linux is monolithic OS, which is for today security standards total insecure design, note windows also is monolithic, forcing me to be offline from internet with those machines - sorry Linus), so can’t get online with this box.

I’m interested in how to fix all this as there is some software i’d like to install.
It is a pioneer 106S dvd-reader, i’d guess from head.

What’s the solution?

Thanks in advance,
Vincent Diepeveen

2

It needs update I suspect so either you need INTERNET or you need to download the repos to use locally

3

Thanks for the quick reply!

Am downloading the repo. It’s 14.2GB, nearly done now. Let’s hope this fixes all trouble!

Thanks,
Vincent

email: diep@xs4all.nl

4

You know that there are updates all the time also OpenSuse has a relatively short support period. Since you are doing sensitive work I’d suggest looking at SLES the commercial Suse from Novel. It has a much longer shelf life +5 years versus 18 or so months.

5

gogalthorp wrote:
> You know that there are updates all the time also OpenSuse has a
> relatively short support period. Since you are doing sensitive work I’d
> suggest looking at SLES the commercial Suse from Novel. It has a much
> longer shelf life +5 years versus 18 or so months.

If the machine is airgapped then security fixes for internet exploits
aren’t especially relevant.

Any critical functional bugs will be apparent soon after initial
installation and can be fixed at that time. As long as the machine isn’t
subsequently updated there won’t be any new bugs to be fixed!

So online updates aren’t vital. JMHO.

The limit comes when some new piece of software has to be installed that
requires e.g. a new version of a library that can’t be backported or
installed in a user directory. Or perhaps when the hardware fails.