One of those days

At least it is if you count “day” as a 24hr period.

Yesterday evening, I needed a particular “calc” file that I reference
every two or three weeks. It had gone! I tried Baloo search and it
found a file of the right name but it was a mail file. After a few
seconds, it turned into a folder containing 15 items and the single
file popped up again. Then that turned into a folder and another copy
of the file appeared. This went on until I’d got more than a dozen
references to the folder. This was getting me nowhere so I stopped the
search.

Now, although my sig says I’m on 13.2, I’m actually trying Leap yet
again and I began to get a hint of deja vu. During the disaster of the
KDE4 introduction, I found I’d lost files and folders due to a bug in
Konqueror; was something similar happening with Dolphin? Anyway, I had
a look in CrashPlan and found the “deleted” file and recovered it. So
all was well apart from me getting a bit nervous about Leap.

This morning, I found that there’d been a break in my wireless
connection overnight. I rebooted my modem and router and that restored
the external connection. Now I had to decide whether to log out or
run through the configuration of the connection via YaST (I use Wicked
rather than Network Manager). I chose the latter as I thought it would
be quicker. Wrong! Although I’ve had a wireless connection for a couple
of weeks, YaST insisted I needed to install “iw”. Needless to say, I
couldn’t with Leap since it isn’t on the DVD. I’m going to have to
check Bugzilla as this bug has been around for years. Mind you,
Bugzilla search rarely works even when I’m having a good day, so I’ve no
chance at the moment.

At this point, I decided I’d had enough of Leap for a while and decided
to reboot to 13.2. I’d also got something else I needed to try in 13.2
if only I could remember what it was. Then I made another mistake.

I use the nVidia driver with Leap as, although nouveau is much better
it isn’t perfect. Trouble is, in 13.2, I stick with nouveau and I have
to alter all the font sizes each time I switch (why does the font size
on the screen change when the setting and screen resolution stays the
same? Weird). Anyway, I thought I’d switch to using nVidia on 13.2.

Added the nVidia repo and YaST immediately popped up with the rpms that
it needed to install. That was more what I was used to whereas Leap
didn’t do that and I had to select the modules by hand. Anyway, I
went ahead with the installation and have been unable to get past
“starting X-server” since. Switched back to nouveau but still
banjaxed. Sigh!

Now back on Leap, hoping no more files mysteriously go (have
gone?) missing.

One good thing to come out of this. Increased confidence in CrashPlan
backup. SO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHPOzQzk9Qo


Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks.
openSUSE 13.2 (64-bit); KDE 4.14.9; AMD Phenom II X2 550 Processor;
Kernel: 4.4.1; Video: nVidia GeForce 210 (Driver: nouveau);
Sound: ATI SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)

Hope today is a better day for you.

I think the worst day I had with PCs might have been one that started off with what I thought was going to be a routine system update. It wouldn’t boot afterwards - complaints about fakeraid IIRC. The problem with the PC in question is I’ve got a lot relying on it. It does local dns/dhcp, nfs, email (fetchmail to cyrus), mythtv, home automation… It’s great the 99%+ of the time it’s working but I’ve got trouble without it.

Anyway, I decided to upgrade to the next version of OpenSUSE, thinking not only would that redo the boot but the particular version the server was running was getting on a bit and the other PCs had been running the newer version for a good while. In doing so, I found not only did I still have the boot problem but (on booting it via some boot/rescue CD I found) but I’'d added half a dozen other problems (one turned out to be due to changes in Apache - I can’t remember what the others were). I was seething by that time and I think it was only the next day I started working out the other bits calmly.

I never did sort the boot out on that PC build btw. I could boot it via this CD, the PC ran a couple of months between reboots and I needed it running. I figured the downtimes I’d have trying possible solutions was likely to cause more hassle than having to supervise this CD boot method once in a while.


I agree “one of these days” on PCs can involve seemingly unrelated things. You know, your struggling to get say your shiny new scanner working and in the middle of it all, you find sound has disappeared and to cap it off, Internet has gone down ISP side so you can’t download some package you want to try. That sort of thing has happened to me a few times over the years.