Well I decided to do a fresh install, up from my current 11.2 i586 to 11.3-x86_64.
(I have always used 32 bit OSes both openSuse and Windows, never SURE that my CPU could use 64 bits. Some googling and a visit to IRC #SUSE leads me to believe that it can (maybe), still not 100% sure…)
Hwinfo |grep cpu here:
http://pastebin.com/HXS35qsV
An easy little project?, A couple of enjoyable hours giving my PC some TLC? Hmmph!
I started by downloading the .iso, no problems there (!)
Now, I have had problems before with optical drives on this PC. The MB has only one IDE/PATA socket, and seems to not like using both channels on it. I have one SATA drive and one pata. I have tried all combo’s of CS, Master/Slave BIOS adjustments (I have updated the BIOS) etc etc. *(5)
So I had to hack apart my father’s USB enclosure, and installed the drive from it internally to his PC.
I then put my IDE HDD into the enclosure and lashed it up to USB *(1), *(2)
I then put a DVDRW drive on the IDE cable. (I would prefer the CD/DVD to be on the USB, but the circuit board on the enclosure is deliberately designed NOT to fit on to a CD/DVD drive, the board itself covering where the power plug would go. I might, I guess, solder power leads to it, and have a flexible lead, but that is for another day. Maybe.)
I fired up K3b, and wasted a number of disks. I chucked out the DVD drive and lashed up another. Drives do not appear in Dolphin or anywhere else. I waste a few more blanks. Putting a blank in notifier pops up “Empty media” but try to write to it, k3b says “Please insert empty media” *(3)
Eventually d/l and install Brasero It works!
I now at last have an install disk.
I now decide to do some tidying up before partition shuffling
I find that my windows/media partition, on which I store TV Radio etc is read-only (Probably my fault, I wrote the fstab entries myself years ago…)
Unfortunately, my windows install cannot see my media partition, despite it being NTFS and ON THE SAME DISK.
So I
chown stephen:users /windows
Dolphin now sees me as owner. I try to delete files from /windows/D No dice. I don’t want to kdesu dolphin and start deleting stuff, so I try:
chown -Rv stephen:users /windows/D
A million lines scroll past, informing me that I am now the owner…
But Dolphin still says owner=root
Back to google, and I happen across this, by our dear friend Swerdna of this very parish:
HowTo Mount NTFS Filesystem Partition Read Write Access in openSUSE
and I edit my fstab accordingly, TY Swerdna
I now have to start some partition shuffling.
I fire up Gparted.
I get
Could not initialise connection to hald.
Normally this means the HAL daemon (hald) is not running or not ready.
I start hal daemon manually
Try again, same result (4)
I thinks Oh well I have an install disk, so I boot from the .iso, (I have md5 and SHA1 checked the d/l, and I ran media check before booting)
Brilliantly, openSuse powers that be do not include Gparted on the install CD.
I have to go to Windows, and use Paragon HDD manager (Very good BTW). BUT. It refuses to move a partition from one disk to another, even though there is ample room.(6)
Questions.
- USB HDD only transfers at 12 MB/s is this right?
- When playing with the USB HDD interface, I attached a Maxtor 3200 120Gb HDD.
I now have a Seagate Barracuda on there, BUT Windows, openSUSE, and even the BIOS still reports it is a Maxtor 3200. How do I persuade the BIOS that it has changed? - Anyone else had problems with k3b not seeing blank disks?
- How do I make gparted run reliably, it runs sometimes, and sometimes not.
- Any hardware gurus please explain why an IDE interface has problems using both channels? Is there any update I can do? MainBoard is ASUS M2N-MX
- Can I move/copy a partion to another HDD?
- I need to keep my /home what is the best way to do this?
- Is there a way to list ALL applications currently installed, so I can check to see what I need to install in the new 11.3?
To be continued…
Any answers/advice/abuse gratefully received, here or I will put some of the specific queries in the appropriate forums.
Thanks for reading this far!