I’ve been using OpenSuse for quite a while now and everything had been working all right (with few adjustments here and there :).
Lately I’ve added a second user for my girlfriend and since then I found a couple of problems:
1 - Whenever I change the active user, the sound starts to fail. If I go and re-start the sound system from within YasT it comes up again (most of the time, some other times, I’m not sure what I do to get it working, just playing around with it, I guess).
2 - We connect to the internet via a wireless connection, which sometimes comes down (The router is not very good, but still works). The problem is only one user (the first one to log in) can see the NetworkManager, so if the network comes down the other user can not restart it.
3 - When I try to get my session back, I’d always get a blank screen. Lately I discovered it is simply a blank screen, not an X crash, as I thought originally, and then I simply enter my password and re-login.
4 - I changed the applications I want started when I first log in to the system, but somehow I can’t get this working. First I put QuteCom in the startup, but then I removed it from the start up, but it still gets up and running.
Thanks! I think the problem now is that the second user to enter the session is not able to use the sound system. Besides, recently the volume control disappeared from my desktop. I had to add it again to the panel, not much, but still…
Would you prefer using Gnome, KDE or other desktop environment (how would you like for the system to look like? )
What sort of applications would you like to run?
First tip:
open Software Management and install libdvdcss (that’s for playing the DVD’s), after that go back to YaST and REMOVE all repositories that contain the word videolan.
Allright. Thank you all. Let’s see. It’s a little difficult to specify my computing needs. Let’s see.
Mainly I use it to browse the net. Ocasionally I use some OpenOffice Applications. I use it to see VCDs or DVDs.
And sometimes I also use it to develop software, mostly web-based, so I use a local web server and Eclipse. I believe that would be all. And I like gnome. Thanks
Get rid of all the KDE repositiories, remove videolan repositories (read the First tip from above before), remove the graphic drivers repo that You don’t need. Disable or remove debug repo. Keep it to minimum. After above post again zypper lr -u
TBH I would go back to Oss, Non-Oss, Update and packman, nvidia or ati and probably the webcam.
You have 3 DE’s so if gnome is the choice I would remove the others. Though I would be inclined to suggest prune it right back to the first few I suggested pull everything back to those repo’s using zypper dup.(Some would recommend update unconditionally I prefer repo integrity myself)
Then add back the few you need, you have many build service repos, and tbh I reckon 95% of people will need little more than the first few I mentioned. i.e I suspect most if not all the games ones are on Packman, mono is probably rolling development if your field is mono related development then perhaps I can see a use etc…etc…
I think you’ve been one click happy, now I would suggest search with your usual suspects first with the weapon of choice zypper, yast sw search etc. Then if you can’t find it consider a one click install, and then it is highly likely you need it updating so just do a one off install, uncheck keep repos.
So all in all really only you can decide what you want to keep or don’t but my opinion is less is less hassle.
Reference your repositories, I typically recommend users keep only 4 repositories. Which means keep only OSS, Non-OSS, Update and Packman.
The reason for keeping such a small number is OSS, Non-OSS, and Update have the most testing (and hence highest quality) and Packman provides the most multimedia and has a reasonable reputation for quality. IMHO one should add more repositories (repos) if and only if they know how to identify problems resulting from having multiple repos, and know how to fix the problems.
In particular, applications packaged (and hosted by) videolan are known to have problems with Packman repos packaged applications and hence I only recommend libdvdcss from videolan, and after that I recommend videolan repos be removed. If you already have a mix of apps from videolan and packman, it could be that mix is causing you some problems.
What is your criteria for saying your sound system has stopped? Did you try EACH (not just one) of the 3 sound tests in the audio troubleshooting guide (ie the 2 speaker-tests and the alsa website test)? SDB:AudioTroubleshooting - openSUSE
If anyone of those work then your sound still functions.
One known problem with Linux is an audio application can seize the sound api and not let it go, such that other applications are not able to access the sound driver. One of the reasons why pulse audio is being implemented is to attempt to work around that problem, however the pulse audio implementation is fraught with bugs and it still does not reliably provide such a capability.
If you wish to see what application is using your sound device, you can type in a konsole or terminal: lsof /dev/dsp* /dev/audio* /dev/mixer* /dev/snd/* Run that at different times when various media applications are playing, and also when none are playing, and you will learn how to identify which application has “seized” your audio. Please do NOT post the output of that here, as I am not interested in looking at it.
The alsa api (as opposed to esd, arts … ) has the capability of sharing audio between applications, and it is possible by switching the audio output module to the alsa API in your various multimedia applications may help a bit, but it may not help at all.
IMHO the best thing to do, is when you switch users, is each user before loging out/shutting down should shut down ALL multimedia applications (in effect releasing the sound driver) and then when the new user’s desktop starts up, the sound driver should be available.
Finally, reference restarting your sound driver, rather than have to go to YaST to do this, a simple way is to type su -c ‘rcalsasound restart’ and enter root password when prompted and that should restart the alsa sound driver, forcing applications to let go the sound driver. Then one can restart one’s mixer and audio should work. One could even put icons on their desktop for sending that command, and for restarting the mixer, if one wishes not to type this in.
