Resize ext3 during install

I would suggest that you don’t do it.

I’ve been using Kubuntu for several years now (and Fedora and RedHat before that) and decided to give openSuse a try. Looking for more love for the KDE version of my distro basically. Anyway, the install was pretty rough.

My first go was to try and resize my kubuntu partition (ext3) during the install. The installer froze at 1%. After a boot to kubuntu which ran fsck, it seems no damage was done. Without letting it run fsck, it could not mount though, so it was not without risk.

I tried to resize it myself after reading some forum entries here and came to the conclusion that resizing is just not worth the effort :wink: and tanked my dell recovery partition (when was I going to use that?) instead. If you do have to resize a partition, ext3 at least, I would recommend that you try another approach or at least resize it outside of the installer. Once I let it just reformat an existing partition, the installer managed to install to the hd.

I had another freeze after leaving the installer for some time as it was waiting for me to enter my host name. I rebooted and it figured out right where it should be though.

The good news is that, once I finally got it installed, openSuse seems like a really nice distro. Good chance that I’m actually going to stick with it.

Actually that’s a pretty nasty bug, have you reported it?

I could experiment with re-sizing ext3 partition and see if it’s a regular issue or if it’s harder to reproduce.

Glad you liked the release, think the main things Kubuntu makes more convenient, is restricted media codec support (very easy adding packman) and proprietary video driver install (not much harder than adding repo if you’re lucky).

I did my best: 564804

I left it at normal severity, because anyone trying to install and resizing an ext3 part, probably has a little experience with Linux. Thought about bumping it up though, as it really shakes your confidence in the distro.

I see the y2logs gotcha where an install fails you no longer have the log files, because you don’t install them, and the process makes them appear more interested in throwing out a bug report than fixing the software. I wish the suse.de developer’s were a bit more sensitive to end-user perspective when commenting on reports, it is easy to be discouraged.

I’ll try to reproduce this by installing 11.1 in ext3, then attempting a resize. But if I can’t reproduce it easily, then may be there’s something specific about your Kubuntu installation that effects things. In which case, more info would be needed to reproduce it; but at least we’d know it is not a general case bug.

Trying out Kubuntu 9.10 for comparison, there’s some things that are nice about it eg) efficient way it suggests and installs media codecs. Have had idea in past for a post-installation report, to guide particularly new oS users, on configuring things like multi-media and graphics drivers or wireless.

Had I known up front I could have tried to pull them. Maybe if I stick with openSuse, I’ll try again. Don’t want to right now because my system has to stay live for me right now.

Kubuntu is a nice distro. I’m on the fence really. openSuse seems a bit more put together for KDE, but Kubuntu has done some nice things as well.

I seem to get more kernel updates with Kubuntu. I’m on 2.6.31-16-generic right now. What is openSuse’s kernel update policy anyway - can’t seem to find it stated anywhere.

Suse is conservative it alway seems to opt for stability over newness. Of course you can always go to the factory repo and get the newest if you like to live dangerously.:wink:
Current standard kernel is Linux 2.6.31.5-0.1

Exactly and in general it is too late by the time you find out about the YaST2 Bug Reporting page. Nor are you likely to bother, until you settled into distro, and find out about Bugzilla etc.

I seem to get more kernel updates with Kubuntu. I’m on 2.6.31-16-generic right now. What is openSuse’s kernel update policy anyway - can’t seem to find it stated anywhere.

Don’t worry kernel update will come when there’s a security issue. Remember oS-11.2 released quite a few weeks later than Kubuntu-9.10 and Novell’s Greg KH is the maintainer for Linux stable releases so 2.6.31.5-0.1 likely had already the changes included in -16-generic. We will definitely get significant patches when they’re necessary.

In past it was decided to reduce number of patches made just after a release, to avoid re-pushing same packages multiple times for minor reasons.

In meantime if you seek less stability and be test guinea pig, I can fix it :slight_smile:


zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/update/11.2-test/ test-updates

No kernel update queued for testing now. There’s a repo KOTD for latest & greatest kernel, but at moment it’s broken on some desktop systems so Caveat Emptor if you try it.

Wow! I that happened quickly, just going to try this out from update/11.2-test/ :

The Linux kernel for openSUSE 11.2 was updated to 2.6.31.8
fixing lots of bugs and several security issues.

Following security issues were fixed: CVE-2009-4131: A file
overwrite issue on the ext4 filesystem could be used by
local attackers that have write access to a filesystem to
change/overwrite files of other users, including root.

CVE-2009-1298: A remote denial of service by sending overly
long packets could be used by remote attackers to crash a
machine.

CVE-2009-4026: The mac80211 subsystem in the Linux kernel
allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service
(panic) via a crafted Delete Block ACK (aka DELBA) packet,
related to an erroneous “code shuffling patch.”

CVE-2009-4027: Race condition in the mac80211 subsystem in
the Linux kernel allows remote attackers to cause a denial
of service (system crash) via a Delete Block ACK (aka
DELBA) packet that triggers a certain state change in the
absence of an aggregation session.

CVE-2009-3939: The poll_mode_io file for the megaraid_sas
driver in the Linux kernel has world-writable permissions,
which allows local users to change the I/O mode of the
driver by modifying this file.

CVE-2009-4005: The collect_rx_frame function in
drivers/isdn/hisax/hfc_usb.c in the Linux kernel allows
attackers to have an unspecified impact via a crafted HDLC
packet that arrives over ISDN and triggers a buffer
under-read. This requires the attacker to access the
machine on ISDN protocol level.

CVE-2009-3080: Array index error in the gdth_read_event
function in drivers/scsi/gdth.c in the Linux kernel allows
local users to cause a denial of service or possibly gain
privileges via a negative event index in an IOCTL request.

CVE-2009-3624: The get_instantiation_keyring function in
security/keys/keyctl.c in the KEYS subsystem in the Linux
kernel does not properly maintain the reference count of a
keyring, which allows local users to gain privileges or
cause a denial of service (OOPS) via vectors involving
calls to this function without specifying a keyring by ID,
as demonstrated by a series of keyctl request2 and keyctl
list commands.

CVE-2009-4021: The fuse_direct_io function in
fs/fuse/file.c in the fuse subsystem in the Linux kernel
might allow attackers to cause a denial of service (invalid
pointer dereference and OOPS) via vectors possibly related
to a memory-consumption attack.

CVE-2009-3547: Multiple race conditions in fs/pipe.c in the
Linux kernel allow local users to cause a denial of service
(NULL pointer dereference and system crash) or gain
privileges by attempting to open an anonymous pipe via a
/proc/*/fd/ pathname. As openSUSE 11.2 by default sets
mmap_min_addr protection, this issue will just Oops the
kernel and not be able to execute code.

CVE-2009-3621: net/unix/af_unix.c in the Linux kernel
allows local users to cause a denial of service (system
hang) by creating an abstract-namespace AF_UNIX listening
socket, performing a shutdown operation on this socket, and
then performing a series of connect operations to this
socket.

CVE-2009-4138: drivers/firewire/ohci.c in the Linux kernel
when packet-per-buffer mode is used, allows local users to
cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference and
system crash) or possibly have unknown other impact via an
unspecified ioctl associated with receiving an ISO packet
that contains zero in the payload-length field.

CVE-2009-4308: The ext4_decode_error function in
fs/ext4/super.c in the ext4 filesystem in the Linux kernel
allows user-assisted remote attackers to cause a denial of
service (NULL pointer dereference), and possibly have
unspecified other impact, via a crafted read-only
filesystem that lacks a journal.

CVE-2009-4307: The ext4_fill_flex_info function in
fs/ext4/super.c in the Linux kernel allows user-assisted
remote attackers to cause a denial of service
(divide-by-zero error and panic) via a malformed ext4
filesystem containing a super block with a large FLEX_BG
group size (aka s_log_groups_per_flex value).

CVE-2009-4306: Unspecified vulnerability in the
EXT4_IOC_MOVE_EXT (aka move extents) ioctl implementation
in the ext4 filesystem in the Linux kernel allows local
users to cause a denial of service (filesystem corruption)
via unknown vectors, a different vulnerability than
CVE-2009-4131.

CVE-2009-4131: The EXT4_IOC_MOVE_EXT (aka move extents)
ioctl implementation in the ext4 filesystem in the Linux
kernel allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files via
a crafted request, related to insufficient checks for file
permissions. This can lead to privilege escalations.

Also, the rt2870 and rt2860 drivers were refreshed to the
level they are in the Linux 2.6.32 kernel, bringing new
device support and new functionality.