Strange YaST and openSUSE 11.2 KDE problems

English Install/Boot/Login
1

This morning when I turned on my PC, I noticed that YaST was having a problem refreshing the repository list, giving an error that it was unable to download the necessary .xml files. I looked around and was able to do this in the CLI with “zypper ref”, followed by “zypper up” which updated 1 package. All seemed good, except YaST was still giving the same error regarding the repos. The Software Update Applet was also showing the same error. Also, my firewall settings were suddenly lost, as far as I could tell (the firewall was still on, but the list of ports I opened was nowhere to be found). Turning the firewall off didn’t help solving any of these problems, btw.

Then I noticed that I couldn’t connect to my MSN account with Kmess, because the “service was unavailable. Unexpected end of file”, or something (I’m sorry, I can’t seem to recall the exact words). I could, however, connect fine with eBuddy.com from my browser.

The reason I mention these seemingly unrelated problems is because this sort of thing has happen to me before with openSUSE 11.2. Overnight, I was unable to browse any sites with Firefox, although Konqueror worked. Kmess and YaST were giving the same errors as today. The strange thing is when I created another user account, and logged in, everything worked fine…

At that time I simply didn’t bothered to investigate further and reinstalled openSUSE. This time, after checking that everything worked in a new account, I tried logging back to my usual account and, lo and behold, everything was working normally… YaST refreshes the repo list fine (sometimes it takes a while, but I think that’s normal) and Kmess connects alright. This time, fortunately, didn’t have any problems with my current browsers (Chrome and Firefox, I’ve uninstalled Konq).

I’m using openSUSE 11.2 with KDE 4.4 RC3, btw, but I’m not sure if that’s to blame. The last time I had these problems I was using 4.3.4, from the KDE43 repo.

2

Here is my two cents:
I have been building a laptop and
desktop as dual boot Win-7 and Suse 11.2

After 10 or more test installs and test
updates, I decided to skip anything more
than the auto-updates during instllation.

I did a full update of KDE to the latest
version, and later decided to roll-back and reinstall the 11.2 base ISO DVD
(plus auto updates during the install).

11.2 is very reliable after the base install and I have decided to wait for a
certified release of the new KDE before I move to it.

Cheers.

3

I didn’t mean to post this in the Install/Boot/Login section of the forum. I only noticed the mistake after the post was published. Maybe one of the admins can change it to the main section?

Of course, anyone’s 2 cents are more than welcome. :wink: I’m just trying to figure out the cause of this strange behaviour, so that it doesn’t happen anymore in the future.

Btw, my current repositories are the following:

1 | NVIDIA Repository | NVIDIA Repository
2 | Packman_repo | Packman repo
3 | contrib_1 | contrib
4 | games | games
5 | google-chrome | google-chrome
6 | kde_4_community_factory | kde 4 community factory
7 | kde_4_factory | kde 4 factory
8 | libdvdcss | libdvdcss
9 | mozilla | mozilla
10 | multimedia | multimedia
[11 | repo-debug | openSUSE-11.2-Debug] [disabled]
12 | repo-non-oss | openSUSE-11.2-Non-Oss
13 | repo-oss | openSUSE-11.2-Oss
[14 | repo-source | openSUSE-11.2-Source] [disabled]
15 | repo-update | openSUSE-11.2-Update
16 | ubuntu_patch | ubuntu patch
17 | vlc | vlc

As I’m sure it’s the case with several openSUSE end-users, I have lots of third-party and semi-official repos enabled. The “ubuntu patch” refers to certain packages for enabling quality anti-aliasing in GTK+ apps.

4

Too many repos and too much fiddling1 | NVIDIA Repository | NVIDIA Repository
2 | Packman_repo | Packman repo
6 | kde_4_community_factory | kde 4 community factory
7 | kde_4_factory | kde 4 factory
9 | mozilla | mozilla
[11 | repo-debug | openSUSE-11.2-Debug] [disabled]
12 | repo-non-oss | openSUSE-11.2-Non-Oss
13 | repo-oss | openSUSE-11.2-Oss
[14 | repo-source | openSUSE-11.2-Source] [disabled]
15 | repo-update | openSUSE-11.2-Update

Keep those, all enabled and refreshing, make sure you are hardwired
Run:

zypper ref

zypper dup
5

Thank you for your input. Well, maybe that’s to blame, I don’t know. I’ve done as you suggested, except I also kept the google-chrome repo (I want it updated). More than 40 packages were downgraded, and some removed, but everything went smoothly.

Let’s see if things become more stable from now on.

6

I’m sorry for digging up this thread, but there has been an update in my situation, and I think this information might be helpful to others in the future.

A couple of days ago (Feb. 15th) I started having problems again accessing Kmess, certain webpages in my browser and YaST software update. My repo list is unchanged since the last time I posted.

However, this time I’m almost 100% sure of what’s been causing these strange issues: the updates in KNetworkManager. Sometimes, when a new version is installed as part of a KDE update (I’ve been using KDE 4.4 since RC1) strange things start happening in my network.

On a hunch, I disabled NetworkManager and setup YaST to manage my Internet connection with ifup, and everything returned to normal, instantly. I’ve been using this setup in the past few days, and things Just Work, so I see no reason to go back to NetworkManager at this time (perhaps I’ll try it latter on).

So there you have it. If you’re using KDE and there’s frequent KNetworkManager updates, and things start getting weird, try setting up your connection through YaST with ifup.

7

There have been bugs in NM on and off
ifup is fine