What should I write about next?

Most of you may know my writing from things like smart package manager and more recently Searching with zypper. I have also written, a very long time ago, a Linux security overview. Currently I am working on doing an article on zypper info. My question to all of you is…what would you like me to wriote about next? It doesn’t matter much to me if I know about it or not. I don’t mind learning something in order to teach it. This will help me be a better tech, and will also provide better documentation. So what suggestions do you have?

So, not sure how much trouble you want to get in to, but with the up and coming openSUSE 12.2 on the horizon, one big change is going to be using grub2. Here are a few hints about that …

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http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/pre-release-beta/473222-any-grub2-tidbits-pass-12-2-may-default-grub2.html

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You could become a grub2 guru and teach us all about it. Remember, you did ask the question. :slight_smile:

Thank You,

I want to know how multiple computers with Linux to work together as a more powerful computer!:wink:

Do you mean like a Linux Beowolf cluster? How to Build a Linux Bewoulf Cluster

I would love a fairly comprehensive explanation of how updates in openSUSE work. For example, what is the difference between zypper patch, zypper update and zypper dist-upgrade? Some stuff that is still unclear to me off the top of my head:

  • What is YaST2 Online Update (or perhaps Apper is the default updater now) equivalent to? zypper patch or zypper update? Or does it do its own thing that’s slightly different?
  • If I’ve run zypper update, will zypper patch or Online Update be able to keep my system updated from then on or will I have “dangling” packages (i.e., packages that were updated to newer versions by zypper update that do not receive patches)?
  • Same thing but with zypper dist-upgrade. Can zypper patch or Online Update keep the system updated afterwards?

I’m also curious if there’s a way to view the changelogs of incoming updates via the CLI. For example Tumbleweed users are advised to use zypper dup to keep their system up to date. It might be interesting to view the changelogs of certain packages before installing them.

Jon,
You’re one of the smartest guys here, me not so much. Which is why I totally agree with Jim. We’re all going to have to know how to work with Grub2, because we’re getting this whether we like it or not. Even if someone tries to stick with 12.1 eventually they to are going to have to update. I’m not real sure but I think even Tumbleweed will eventually be getting Grub2 too aren’t they?This of course will lead to some problems & guys like us are going to have to help them fix it.
So while I consider myself a small LED that fell into a streelight box around here I know I can learn grub2 if I have someone who’s good at explaining such things. Someone like you Jon.

Sagemta, I appreciate the compliment. Interestingly, I don’t see myself that way. I look up to you and a few others.
I agree Grub2 does need documenting. The way I do things is on a live system. I don’t like doing virtualization. I prefer to stare down the devil directly instead of pretend. This leaves me with roughly two options, read the documentation from the official grub site and rewrite it, or play with my grub settings and intentionally break it, so I can document it and fix it. By the way, I am running Grub2 on my 12.1 system.

So, so far we have Grub2, more on zypper/package management, and cluster Linux.
Come on people, there’s got to be more stuff you want documented or have existing documentation improved upon. Please, don’t be bashful. Jump in and let me know what you want.

I should probably update my Linux security overview. It’s about 8 years old.

You could compare various sw package management gui’s and provide a comparison tableyast gtk vrs yast qt sw management (I really prefer gtk for updating but qt for overall management),
apper
gnome-packagekit
“yast wagon”
yast online update
packagekit applet(s)
others …

and mention those no longer supported as they do pop up on searchesrug
kpackagekit
kpackage
Smart

On 2012-04-07 18:16, Jonathan R wrote:
> Come on people, there’s got to be more stuff you want documented or
> have existing documentation improved upon. Please, don’t be bashful.
> Jump in and let me know what you want.

X’-)

Systemd.


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)

Yes , systemd needed simply explanation, some of the commands that we used no longer work that way

This is quite a nice and quick comparison. It was great for me at least :slight_smile:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SysVinit_to_Systemd_Cheatsheet

Best regards,
Greg

I never knew about wagon, so I installed it and then gave it ago.
Interesting. It seems to be a GUI to zypper dup. Equivalent to the YaST
one would see when running an install/upgrade from the cd/dvd. A very
nice tool.

If I did a comparison of things like GTK vs QT it’d be to list features
which should be nearly identical. Basically the GTK lay out is
different. Essentially this comes down to a preference. All I could
really say is, try them. See which one you like.

Actually zypper still maintains backwards compatibility with rug. Zypper
also is compatible with yum. kpackagekit is now replaced with apper.
Same concept. Same functionality (or nearly the same). I haven’t seen a
system use kpackage in a very long time. That has been obsolete for a
while now. Packgekit took over a lot of this.

Smart is still made and developed, just we on openSUSE don’t use it.
Why? Be cause now zypper works. We used smart back around the 10.3
fiasco when SuSE changed from YaST to zypper and broke it so bad even
the developers said to use smart. One could use smart now if they wanted
to, just as they could use yum if they wanted to.

Do you think you could be more clear as to what to cover and why? I
could see each of those topics you mentioned being an article unto
itself. You have eleven topics listed which could keep me busy for
eleven moths, give or take.

With smart, I know, or used to know it quite well. I wrote the
documentation for it. http://labix.org/smart “Credits: Jonathan Rocker -
Documentation help.” I stopped working with smart when they advised me
they weren’t going to use the book I had been working on. I still have a
copy of it in my Google docs.

On Sat, 2012-04-07 at 20:26 +0000, google01103 wrote:
> You could compare various sw package management gui’s and provide a
> comparison table
> yast gtk vrs yast qt sw management (I really
> prefer gtk for updating but qt for overall management),
> apper
> gnome-packagekit
> “yast wagon”
> yast online update
> packagekit applet(s)
> others …
>
> and mention those no longer supported as they do pop up on
> searches
> rug
> kpackagekit
> kpackage
> Smart
>
>

I do use both, find gtk more useful for upgrades and qt for package management (what’s using space, whats installed, locked)
gtk vrs qt - maybe the differences are minimal (though not visually and not always obvious) but:

  • gtk can select multiple non contiguous apps using ctrl, qt can’t

  • gtk can display available upgrades, iirc in qt “update” are those selected to be updated (modified in gtk)

  • qt has more granularity in displaying the installation summary

    I think just having a document listing and describing with links as to what is and was available would be useful for people when they see or read mentions of the various apps. For the non-active one just a quick that it existed, is no longer supported and if replaced what it was replaced with.

Maybes:

something focused on how to automatically update

  • packagekit applet(s)
  • Yast online update
  • zypper cron jobs (I actually do a sudo zypper ref && sudo zypper up in Kalarm “execute in terminal” every morning and then decide whether to or not to (sudo permissions set up in yast sudo). Used to use the yast sw applet (whatever is was called) and when it was abandoned tried and hated the packagekit one (haven’t tried whatever is there now)

Yast vrs Apper

Packagekit vrs Zypper on the comand line

That makes me wonder why it starts the QT GUI under Gnome … unless you use the --gtk command line option or export DESKTOP_SESSION to “gnome”.
if DESKTOP_SESSION is either “gnome-shell”, “gnome-fallback” or “cinnamon”, it defaults to QT. It should not be… or did I miss something?

no idea use KDE so I force it with yast --gtk sw_single

I just wrote a CSS theme for QT YaST (despite I never use it but I must have had time to waste). You might want to have a look at it: http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/how-faq-forums/unreviewed-how-faq/474383-theming-qt-yast.html.

Well, if it is true that openSUSE plans to ship btrfs as the next offical file system in 12.1 then maybe, (I did not check if this exists already) a howto on repair functions and meccanisms / possibilities as compared to ext4 would be surely of help to users in order to be able to use it to the full extend.
Grub2 I agree is also a good candidate, especially on how to personalize the boot, as it is not straightforward any more as with grub-legacy.

As you may have noticed, I finished zypper info. There are certainly some great ideas here. For me to do Grub2, I’d have to take it in segments, similar to what I have done to zypper.

Basically what I see here are two popular requests. 1) package management and 2) Grub2.
There was also a request for clustering to make a super computer (I find this facinating). Package management is something I am quite familiar with. Grub2 is something I know very little on, so this would stretch those muscles a bit and cause me to learn. The same is true with clustering. So Grub2 and clustering would take me the longest, since I’d have to learn it first.

Given this, what would you rather I do? Don’t forget, I am still open to more suggestions. I am sure there are more suggestions/ideas out there.

Jon,
Remember what I wrote in post 6? If you check out the Pre-Release Beta section there’s some confusion with Grub2. One thing I’ve already found is that Grub 2 doesn’t use a menu.lst a lot of here were real used to that. For the short term an article on Grub2 might be a good idea.
Now that clustering piques my interest that could be a good intermediate to long term project.
So Jon ready to stretch those muscles a bit?

Sagemta, you are right about Grub2 being different, and that we need it now and in the future. It seems that Grub2 has 3 main files and directories.

/boot/grub2/grub.cfg
/etc/grub.d/
/etc/default/grub

Its new naming convention reminds me of the Xorg naming convention.

In /etc/grub.d we have;
00_header
10_linux
20_linux_xen
30_os-prober
40_custom
41_custom
90_persistent

You don’t edit the /boot/grub/grub.cfg by hand. Or so some documentation says. Right now, that’s about the extent of what I know about Grub2. Time for a workout :wink: