openSUSE 11.3 Gnome Milestone2 experience

malcolmlewis · February 20, 2010, 10:22pm

Hi All
Well I have finished my install of milestone 2 on my Toshiba Tecra M3

Hardware:

CPU Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.73GHz
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE (32MB RAM)
1 GB RAM (2x512MB single channel)
Bluetooth, Infrared, 80GB 5400RPM HDD, LCD 1024x768

Since it’s running an old BIOS I needed to add edd=off in the GRUB
options to start up the installer, seems this is related to the new way
the MBR is discovered.

It was a standard Gnome install with automatic configuration, didn’t
accept the default config as wanted swap at the end of the drive since
it hardly gets used


Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xfcce6334

Device Boot     Start    End      Blocks       Id   System
/dev/sda1   *   1        9729     78148161   f    W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5        1        9          72229+      83  Linux
/dev/sda6        10      2620     20972826   83  Linux
/dev/sda7        2621  9467     54998496   83  Linux
/dev/sda8        9468  9729     2104483+   82  Linux swap/Solaris

The dvd drive can be a bit finicky at times so I always disable the
install from images, not long after the partitioning was done I had a
popup to create /mnt/etc/sysconfig, accepted this and away it went.
When it was about 70% it decided it couldn’t find an rpm, so just
popped into a virtual terminal (ctrl+alt+F2), unmount /dev/sr0 and then
remounted it and ctrl+alt+F7 to press the retry button and all was
fine, it completed the install and configuration without any more user
intervention to present me with the Gnome DE.

Since I want to use the 3d features, needed to install the proprietary
driver. I had to use the new BETA version of the driver (thank you
Knurpht) as well. Installed kernel-source, kernel-syms,
linux-kernel-headers, make and gcc dropped to runlevel 3 ran the
installer and back to runlevel 5, no xorg or sax2 to worry about

Had to run CompizConfig Settings Manager and manually select as the
default appears to be empty so there was no window decoration, wobbly
windows etc. I added the Compiz extras as well to get the cylinder
effect.

Screenshot;
http://thumbnails20.imagebam.com/6896/fa5e1768952666.gif](http://www.imagebam.com/image/fa5e1768952666)

PS thanks to caf4926 for the desktop background

Bluetooth was working out of the box, no need for me to build a patched
toshiba_acpi module to get that working as well yay!

All in all for me, was very smooth and rather boring for a Milestone
release, now on to manually build some of my rpms so I can post this
from claws-mail and carry on with some testing

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 2 (i586) Kernel 2.6.33-rc7-3-default
up 2:01, 2 users, load average: 0.24, 0.06, 0.10
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 195.36.03

caf4926 · February 20, 2010, 10:33pm

Nice write up.
I just wish I had a free machine ATM but I don’t, so it’s VBox. But M1 and M2 both perform amazingly well.

malcolmlewis · February 20, 2010, 10:56pm

Thanks

Well it’s just been resurrected, I thought the nvidia card had died,
but once I removed the 1GB RAM module I had installed a while back with
the old 512MB one it all sprang back into life. So the only thing that
has been fixed was the LCD which died, it was still under warranty so
just had to send back to NZ for fixing and they sent it back all free
of charge last year.

The netbook still has 11.2 and Goblin on it, so will wait a bit and
maybe try an RC on that, and just concentrate on this one since it has
the nvidia card.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 2 (i586) Kernel 2.6.33-rc7-3-default
up 3:57, 2 users, load average: 0.10, 0.07, 0.08
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 195.36.03

malcolmlewis · February 21, 2010, 5:13pm

Hi
Here is a copy of a bootchart I just did, 54.75 seconds, I’m
impressed!
http://thumbnails20.imagebam.com/6907/ee072a69062288.gif](http://www.imagebam.com/image/ee072a69062288)

I just set my system for no autologin, installed boochartd, then when
at the GRUB menu just add init=/sbin/bootchartd to the options. The
image will appear as /var/log/bootchart.png

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 2 (i586) Kernel 2.6.33-rc7-3-default
up 0:06, 3 users, load average: 0.30, 0.44, 0.24
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 195.36.03

malcolmlewis · February 21, 2010, 10:58pm

OK, so I decided to try out the 8GB SSD drive I have along with an SD
for /home and swap. The install is a duplicate of the 80GB. I did
however disable smartd, cifs and nfs services this time as they are not
used.

Here is the drive setup and usage


Disk /dev/sda: 8186 MB, 8186232832 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 995 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x26aae55b

Device         Boot Start   End Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1      *    1       995 7992306  83  Linux

Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 7948 MB, 7948206080 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 966 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x1cbaa775

Device         Boot  Start  End Blocks   Id System
/dev/mmcblk0p1       1      705 5662881  83 Linux
/dev/mmcblk0p2       706    966 2096482+ 82 Linux swap/Solaris

Filesystem      1K-blocks  Used    Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1       7866816    4285004 3182200   58%  /
udev            511968     252     511716    1%   /dev
/dev/mmcblk0p1  5573936    2048336 3242456   39%  /home

Here are some disk access tests;


hdparm -Tt /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads:   1732 MB in  2.00 seconds = 866.34 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads:  176 MB in  3.00 seconds =  58.59 MB/sec

/dev/mmcblk0:
Timing cached reads:   1540 MB in  2.00 seconds = 769.66 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads:   30 MB in  3.06 seconds =   9.82 MB/sec

Bootcharts with/without edd

edd=off in boot string
Boot time = 44.55 seconds
http://thumbnails11.imagebam.com/6911/bfb1d869108855.gif](http://www.imagebam.com/image/bfb1d869108855)

no edd command in boot string
Boot time = 42.43 seconds
http://thumbnails14.imagebam.com/6911/10fa3c69108848.gif](http://www.imagebam.com/image/10fa3c69108848)

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 2 (i586) Kernel 2.6.33-rc7-3-default
up 0:22, 2 users, load average: 0.21, 0.66, 1.02
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 195.36.03

oldcpu · February 21, 2010, 11:54pm

How does hot plug mounting of memory sticks work in 11.3 M2 gnome?

Also, any external drives you can test for hotplug mounting?

Do you have a digital camera you can test (for hotplug detection)?

malcolmlewis · February 22, 2010, 1:12am

Hi oldcpu
hal-addon-storage along with policy kit. I connect via USB, it all
works fine with usb drives, my olympus stylus 600 connects up ok as
well as an external storage device.


[10376.240207] usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and
address 7
[10376.375654] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0324,
idProduct=bc06
[10376.375662] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2,
SerialNumber=3
[10376.375669] usb 1-1: Product: RALLY2_TURBO
[10376.375674] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: OCZ Technology
[10376.375679] usb 1-1: SerialNumber: AA04012700085402
[10376.379064] scsi5 : usb-storage 1-1:1.0
[10377.389629] scsi 5:0:0:0: Direct-Access     OCZ
RALLY2_TURBO     1100 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
[10377.389963] sd 5:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[10377.404328] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] 8028160 512-byte logical blocks: (4.11
GB/3.82 GiB)
[10377.405064] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[10377.405072] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 43 00 00 00
[10377.405078] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[10377.408914] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[10377.408927]  sdb: sdb1
[10377.413811] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[10377.413823] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
[10377.653780] kjournald starting.  Commit interval 15 seconds
[10377.654974] EXT3-fs (sdb1): using internal journal
[10377.654983] EXT3-fs (sdb1): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 2 (i586) Kernel 2.6.33-rc7-3-default
up 2:42, 3 users, load average: 0.15, 0.11, 0.03
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 195.36.03