1. Make sure you have a full set of printed instructions before you start, including this page, the commands page, and SuSE's instructions.
2. You can't use the boot floppies to start the installation, because they don't contain the natsemi.c networking card. Once you find a solution for this, you can insall the rest of the system from ftp://ftp-linux.cc.gatech.edu/pub/linux/distributions/suse/suse/. If you need to make a new bootdisk, you can use download the floppy image (in Windows) from SuSE's website and then use rawrite2.exe to creat the boot floppy. Just type rawrite and follow the prompts.
3. Instead, reset the BIOS to boot from CDROM and boot from the CD. Make sure the CDs themselves are clean -- I wasted hours on dirty CDs that would suddenly fail on a file.
4. Use cfdisk to define the partitions -- don't use PartitionMagic in Windows, though for ext2 that works too. Don't use reiserfs -- it's not very robust yet. A reasonable arrangement is around 24MB for a separate boot sector, 750MB for a swap partition (for 384MB of RAM on the system), and the rest for the main Linux partition. You could also define a separate /home partition to keep your documents away from the operating system; in my case, I keep those on the Windows partitions.
5. Expect to discard the partitioning suggestion. Use the advanced configuration to enter the partition table. I used the existing partitions, but took care to specify that they all need reformatting -- the boot sector is mounted at /boot and formatted in ext2, the swap partition is reformatted as swap (even if PartitionMagic has already done it), and -- most importantly -- the main partition, which is mounted at / (root), must be formatted as reiserfs. Otherwise you won't get the reiser file system on your computer. It makes lightning recoveries from crashed disks.
6. Here's a remark on capturing: "Maybe someone can tell me what data-mode would be best to capture under EXT3 (journal, ordered or writeback, I think journal is too slow, but I can't say if ordered or writeback is better). Maybe it's generally better to use EXT2 or any other filesystem for capturing."
7. It may be a good idea to start by writing Lilo to a floppy -- if the write to Lilo fails, you've can't boot to Linux and could have trouble booting to Windows. Keep a couple of recent Windows bootdisks handy, and a copy of a functioning Lilo somewhere.
8. Install the full system at once -- you can get configuration problems if you start out with a small package and then expand, as I found out.
9. Start with All of KDE if you have room for it, then go in manually and select multimedia, and then manually and select individual packages you want or need. Don't skimp on the little packages. I cut out the documentation, as I've found it useless (a terrible search function), and everything is easily available on the net. That saved perhaps 200MB; I did it over the protests of YaST.
10. When you've made all your choices, save them on a floppy. It could save you a lot of time if something goes wrong.
11. Once you've made it through the installation, define the monitor using sax2. On my system I have to do this because the default definition is 640x480, which makes it hard to operate Yast menues. I didn't have any luck defining 3D -- it works, but what I did gave the screen a wavy texture. To get information on the 3D configuration, use the command 3Ddiag. Note that if you build your own kernel, you can add Voodoo Banshee support directly, I suspect this makes a difference (at least dmesg shows it up). The problems I had with a wavy display appears to come from defining an LCD display -- it seems to disappear if you define a CRT type, though I'm not positive about this. Vesa I think. Once you get it right, it's perfect -- I think you should avoid the LCD.
12. Reboot to see if you get the GUI and the right screen resolution. Now the calibrating starts, first in the root user.
13. Define the network card (using Yast2), so that you can download stuff. Yast2 will recognize the Netgear FA312 fast ethernet PCI adapter card as a National Semiconductor chip using the natsemi.c driver, which is correct. Enter these values:
    
    

    FixedIP	128.97.184.152 or 97
    Hostname	test.sscnet.ucla.edu
    Gateway	128.97.184.1
    Subnetmask	255.255.255.0
    DNShost (server)	sscnet.ucla.edu(128.97.42.3)
    DNSsearch	128.97.42.3

    
    In the same process, you can define the modem, which should also be recognized automatically. Enter the BOL on-campus connection at 68311, user fsteen and pw Evolut8.
14. Define the keyboard, not in Sax2, but in the Preferences | Peripherals section -- Microsoft Natural Pro is listed. Your wheel mouse should be working -- try either this same place for the mouse, or else Sax2. For getting the hotkeys to work, see below.
15. You probably should do an online update from SuSE, but don't get the freetype2 font manager! See below. Alternatively, get the freetype2 at once and don't run through the anti-aliasing rigmarole -- just make sure you don't check "anti-alias" in the Kfontinst program, as that made my desktop unaccessible!
16. Install true-type fonts from Microsoft, using the script "fetchmsttfonts" in the Administration | Tools menu (cf. http://www.suse.com/en/products/suse_linux/i386/packages_personal/xf86tools.html. It's apparently possible to use ttf files from your own Windows installation too, but I haven't tried to mess with that. I got burned bigtime erasing fonts I didn't like only to discover I'd rendered Linux inoperable. It is, however, safe to uninstall or delete cyrillic fonts if they somehow snuck in; use Kfontinst. See also below on the X Windows font server.
17. If you have 7.3, beware of the freetype2 update, designed to correct the anti-alias problem. It froze my desktops. Don't update this file. Instead, follow the instructions given in the Tech Notes on SuSE 7.3 at http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tips/3878/3/. If you do it right after installation -- and I suppose preferably after installing the MS fonts -- that process actually works, and you rebuild freetype2 with anti-alias.
18. That was the critical bit. Next, use fdisk -l to locate current disk structures and then edit etc/fstab so that the relevant Windows partitions are automatically mounted. For details on the parameters, do man fstab and man mount.

Note that you need to specify uid=500 to mount the Windows file systems automatically and to give users (other than root) write access! I don't really understand this -- the number for the user ID (uid) is the number of the process attempting to access the partition, and I'm guessing 500 is simply a high enough number to include all relevant processes. For details, see http://seva.chicago.il.us/writings/alg/2000.02.10-alg-vfat.shtml.

Note that it's not worth including the Novell File Server here, because it needs more of the system loaded before it installs, and besides it's finicky. It is accessed using the program ncpfs (see instructions).

At the second installation of SuSE, or rather the second rebuilt kernel, I had problems getting the CDRW to work; see details.

18. Make sure OpenSSH is installed -- there's a security patch for it online. Then go to SuSE's web site or mirrors and download kssh (in kde4), in that order. They should all install directly from the packager. This also installs sftp, the secure ftp server. Cf. your Linux remote file.
19. Next, install Opera. Register with u-ywzTw-x6UQp-L7rSF-krtTL-cKFuA -- a substitute for the Opera for Windows you had to pay for. When they start selling Opera for Linux 6, see if they'll transfer your payment, or just ask to have it transferred now.
20. Download Flash and install it in Opera's plugin directory; Konqueror will find it. Check that RealPlayer works; it should have been part of the installation.
21. Define the printer. You can for instance pick the HL-1250 driver for the HL-1450 printer, using 600dpi, letter-sized paper, and the ljet4 driver; this seems to work fine. Define it as lpr so you can easily reach it from other applications. If you installed the files necessary for CUPS, you could fiddle with that at some point if you get poor performance. The HL-1250 with ljet4 works fine in StarOffice too.
    
22. All of this was in the root user. Now switch to the other user and customize the desktop -- if you want to import a background picture, you need a .jpg file. Then get StarOffice from the StarOffice home page at Sun -- download the latest version (or use OpenOffice). Make sure it downloads as a binary file -- use Konqueror rather than Opera. User frodesteen and pw paisies. I installed 6.0 beta on 6 December 2001. You can define My Documents as a folder on the Windows partition. I defined Arial and Times New Roman as the default fonts. Define the printer -- just use default values. Note that if you want to run StarOffice from root, just copy the file /home/steen/.sversionrc to /root -- it contains a single line that points StarOffice 6.0 to its location under home/steen -- and add the icon on the root desktop.
23. That's it! Not that hard if you know exactly what to do and where to get the right files. Note that it's easy to screw up, so get exactly the files you need and don't compromise; it will cost you. The moral: there is lots of advice on Linux on the web, but much of it describes tortuous ways of achieving things that SuSE and others have now incorparated into their packages.
24. For how the system broke, see the mid-December kernel rebuild.

Second SuSE installation

On 22 December 2001 I did a straight and unproblematic massive installation of SuSE 7.3, making very few changes and just letting it do its thing. This produced a stable installation -- I even went with ext2fs -- and I liked it. I did it first just to do Linux from Scratch, but the installation was so stable that I ended up following up on it by installing a new kernel to support the new gigadrive and at the same time for firewire support.

HTML editors.

Amaya. On 10 January, I installed Amaya from the W3C. To run it from the console, you have to add this line to the path env variable:

PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/Amaya/GTK/bin ; export #PATH

and then type amaya. See details. It works fine but doesn't allow you to past into the application.

StarOffice. I secured a copy of StarOffice -- a complete version, including hte player this time -- but I didn't install it. I can likely use the player on the laptop -- this really would work. However, for the moment, you've already spent way too much time in December on Linux! I got SuSE around 24 November, so it's been pretty much exactly a month, but an extremely absorbing and devastating month! I guess I'm triumphant it's all working now...

Quanta. The best bet for an html editor may not be StarOffice but Quanta Gold, developed by TheKompany at http://www.thekompany.com/products/.They just released version 3, with an integrated ftp client. Try to get some opinions on it. So that's looking like your best bet on the editor front. For the moment, just use the Quanta 2 that came with SuSE; if it seems promising, test out the Quanta Gold 3 demo version and then buy it. This should allow you to migrate to Linux. It's probably good news that Quanta has been taken commercial. The main problem is that neither application seems to know how to stay out of Dreamweaver's templates -- it's looking like I cannot use them. I should find a different solution -- perhaps I can just use a basic empty file and add to it. It wouldn't be a Dreamweaver template and couldn't be changed by changing a template -- but that's perhaps something you can live without.

E-mail clients

Sendmail appears to be installed and working fine -- this means I don't need SMTP. For outgoing mail, both pine and Kmail work fine -- Kmail also wroks as the default e-mail client as defined in Opera, and likely also in Konqueror.

I guess I could ask e-mail to be routed here too. There's perhaps no real reason not to -- except that you then have to have your machine on at all times and working in Linux! You're simply not ready for that yet.

Browsers

Mozilla was a bit of a disappointment -- Opera is better, so I installed that again. See details on Opera plugins.

File managers

The KDE file manager is Krusader -- I don't know if I have it, and don't think I've tried it. The Midnight Commander is another file manager that I almost certainly have.

Styles

I downloaded Mosfet's Liquid style in early January; it transformed my desktop. Keep an eye on the KDE 3 update!

Graphics

On 31 January, I got the Suse rpm of Mosfet's Pixie 0.2.1 -- watch out for the 0.3 release. This is alpha software, but it works incredibly well. You know have a beautifully made Linux image manager for huge numbers of images. It will also run slide shows. It also has a minimal editor that may expand.

Sound

Sound continues to be an occasional issue, although oss appears to be working fine. The Soundblaster card is detected on bootup and has a great driver; it seems to works fine. See details.

Updates

On 15 March 2002, I installed a security update from SuSE, the libz update at ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/7.3/a1/. I performed the update on both Gubbio and Cyberspace. I downloaded the rpm file into the root directory switched to the command line with Alt+F2. Then I did "init S" or Single User Mode. This shuts down a lot of programs, including the NIC card, placing the system in a good mode for fundamental upgrades. I then ran the rpm file with the command "rpm -Fhv <filename>" It went fine. Single User Mode could also be useful in the case of a hacker attack, as it basically shuts you off from the world.

GCC

Both gubbio and cyberspace have three versions of gcc installed: the original 2.95.3 that came with SuSE 7.3, the gcc 3.0.1 that is the alternative compiler for SuSE 7.3, and the recent 3.1. Transcode needs 3.0.1 to 3.0.4.

Utilities

On 11 May 02 I installed gprename -- see details. On 12 May 02 I installed GKrellM, a system monitor.

XFree86

On 18 May 02 I upgraded XFree86 from SuSE's 4.1.0 to SuSE's 4.2.0, as described in the cyberspace installation. There is a configuration tool you might want to try -- xf86cfg -- see details (bottom of scroll).

Wine

I got the cvs on 6 June 2002; see details.

Configuration

On 15 May 2002 I worked on gubbio's configuration files.

Under /etc/samba I changed lmhosts to include cyberspace. Recall that the workgroup is sunrise and that hosts allowed on gubbio is just spello and cyberspace -- in fact, you should disallow cyberspace -- which I did. So hosts allowed in smb.conf is now just spello, which is as should be. You should verify that you are unable to connect to gubbio from cyberspace.

On cyberspace, I modified /etc/fstab, removing the line //gubbio/steen /home/steen/mnt/gubbio smbfs noauto,username=steen,user,uid=500 0 0 This means you won't be able to mount gubbio on cyberspace anymore -- but you can of course still mount cyberspace on gubbio. If you find there's a need to mount gubbio from cyberspace, you just need to add this line back to cyberspace's /etc/fstab, and the name cyberspace to gubbio's /etc/samba/smb.conf file.

X-windows works great for running cyberspace from gubbio, also from the root user. I entered

xhost -

which means that only authorized clients can connect. It appears I have successfully defined gubbio as an authorized client on cyberspace, both root and steen, which is as it should be. It is also evident that my openSSH is automatically allowing X-windows forwarding now; I take it this is a result of the setting in "ForwardX11 yes" in /etc/ssh/ssh_config. Note that users may do it individually by putting this statement in their ~/.ssh/config -- I don't think I've done that, and at the moment I don't think I will, as I don't want to restrict X-Windows access to legitimate users.

I also disabled the Nameserver Cache Daemon, as on cyberspace. I just stopped nscd with /etc/init.d/nscd stop and then went into /etc/rc.config and changed "Run the Name Service Caching Daemon at boot time" to no -- and then did a /etc/init.d/inetd reload.

Other changes in /etc/rc.config:

• It may be that you don't need portmap -- it's used by NIS and NFS. I left it to "yes" because I don't know what it does.
  
  
• Note that if you start using NFS, you may want to enable FAM in /etc/rc.config. KDE use this daemon to monitor directorys and files.
  
  
• Don't start the httpd daemon Apache
  
  
• Start INET6 for IPv6 services. I'm not sure whether I can really take advantage of this, but maybe I can.
  
  
• ALSA is not started by default -- should it?
  
  
• CUPS is started by default -- should I kill it? Or can I switch off gs in some other way? gs is taking up 99% of CPU power -- it may be configured at gs.upp/ -- but no. I decided to uninstall the printer driver CUPS system, as I can't figure out why gs takes up so much CPU power. In its place is installed BSD, the lpd printer spooler. We'll see if that makes a difference. SuSE wanted the CD, and gave this message when it was all done,

  warning: /etc/printcap created as /etc/printcap.rpmnew

It looks like this was successful; no idea if I can print or not.

When I ran SuSEconfig, I got this (among other things):

ATTENTION: You have modified //etc/inetd.conf. Leaving it untouched...
You can find my version in //etc/inetd.conf.SuSEconfig...

Executing /sbin/conf.d/SuSEconfig.susewm...
SuSEwm: ERROR: gnome: no "name" defined !
SuSEwm: ERROR: wmaker: no name defined !
SuSEwm: ERROR: wmaker: no name defined !
SuSEwm: ERROR: wmaker: no name defined !
SuSEwm: ERROR: wmaker: no name defined !
SuSEwm: ERROR: wmaker: no name defined !
SuSEwm: ERROR: wmaker: no name defined !

I went into /etc/inetd.conf and commented out telnet -- this should not be possible. Not much is running on gubbio! I then looked at
/etc/inetd.conf.SuSEconfig, didn't find anything changed, and deleted it. I then looked at /etc/hosts -- nothing to do.

I then looked at /etc/inittab and commented out mingetty's 4, 5, and 6. To reload inittab, use telinit q

There are still likely too many daemons running.

On 25 May 2002 I started the FAM daemon ("reduces network load if your home directory is mounted in NFS") and the NFS server; I've not configured them. I turned CUPS off.

3D video

Graphics configuration has always been a pain on gubbio. Here's a new attempt, using 3Ddiag. This is a program for diagnosing your graphics card. It found:

Verifying 3D configuration based on XFree86 4 for 3D board
"3Dfx Interactive, Inc. Voodoo Banshee (121a@0003)"

Tests for correct OpenGL libraries/GLX extensions:
Symbolic Links ... failed!

3D Hardware acceleration is not used. To use 3D Hardware acceleration the script

"/usr/X11R6/bin/switch2xf86_glx"

must be executed.

rc.config (SCRIPT_3D=switch2xf86_glx) ... failed!

3D Hardware acceleration is not used. To use 3D
Hardware acceleration the entry

SCRIPT_3D="switch2xf86_glx"

is required in /etc/rc.config. Execute /sbin/SuSEconfig after changing this.

Well, I did this in /etc/rc.config: commented out SCRIPT_3D="switch2mesasoft" and added SCRIPT_3D="switch2xf86_glx"

I then ran /sbin/SuSEconfig and then /usr/X11R6/bin/switch2xf86_glx -- the latter gave no feedback. I then tried the 3Ddiag again, and got this:

gubbio:/etc # 3Ddiag
3Ddiag version 0.369
Verifying 3D configuration:
Using 3dinfo
************************************************************

Verifying 3D configuration based on XFree86 4 for 3D board
"3Dfx Interactive, Inc. Voodoo Banshee (121a@0003)":

Tests for package "xf86_glx":
package ... done.
package files ... done.

Tests for correct OpenGL libraries/GLX extensions:
Symbolic Links ... done.
rc.config (SCRIPT_3D=switch2xf86_glx) ... done.

Test for correct XFree86 version ... done.

Tests for XFree86 configuration:
Config File /etc/X11/XF86Config ... done.
Driver ... done.
Color Depth ... done.
Extensions ... done.

----------------------- NOTE -----------------------------------
If 3D hardware OpenGL configuration is not stable enough, you
should switch back to 'Mesa Software Rendering'. You can
verify this configuration with the command "3Ddiag --mesasoft".
----------------------- NOTE -----------------------------------

Checking GLU/glut runtime configuration:
GLU ... done (package xf86glu)
glut ... done (package mesaglut)
gubbio:/etc #

So as far as I can see, the 3d is now working. I tested it out on mplayer, and it's possible that it's better -- it's certainly looking extremely good. So this would be an interesting lesson -- a simple configuration entry in rc.config did what repeated attempts in YaST never managed.

See also mtrr. There's a fbset command that works, not sure if you can set parameters but you likely can.

Fonts

Here's a great source of instructions on fonts: Font-names must be in lowercase and contain no spaces. If you already have tt-fonts on a partition containing Windows, a quick way to copy them all in lowercase is to mount the partition as a DOS filesystem instead of fat32. This way they'll all seem to be lowercase without spaces, whatever they might look like on a fat32 partition. Afterwards you can change partition type back to whatever is relevant. The file that needs modyfying if you want to do this is /etc/fstab. Unmount first - change filesystem - remount and the files will be 8.3 type DOS files se seen from Linux. If you don't feel comfortable with editing this file by hand, use linuxconf to unmount. change filesystem, and remount. That way you don't risk typos.

Remaining issues

1. Read the story of someone transferring their office to KDE
2. Install Junkbuster. The issue here is to get hold of a version that lets you decide what appears in place of the ads!
3. The printer isn't working. For this debacle, see Printing
4. Define the scanner. I did that successfully once, and you may have succeeded with the new kernel.
5. Netware File Server (note that this only works with the new kernel and requires root to mount)
6. Linux from Windows.To access the Linux partitions from Windows, you need Explore2fs from Win (external). It's not clear that it'll be able to read the gigadrive! For remote access from a Linux box to a Windows box, use Samba -- see the Samba FAQ and web site http://www.samba.org.
7. Remote maintenance> I enabled X-windows in some configuration file -- I think it may have been the main rc.config, but I'm not sure now. I may have kept notes of this somewhere.
8. The Gigadrive installed fine -- but the bus speed is set to 33MHZ instead of 133. "Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx" -- cf. 2001-12-29 dmesg and 2001-12-29_Kernel. Can you change the bus speed for tha gigadrive only? Does my motherboard support 133MHZ?
9. GLX driver -- To find out if you have hardware support, do "glxinfo" at a prompt, scroll to the top of the results, and see if you have "direct rendering: Yes". Here's what I got on 7 February 2002 (so I have hardware support for direct rendering, but it's done with Mesa, which may be very slow. I must say everything looks fine and dandy though):

   steen@gubbio:~> glxinfo
   name of display: :0.0
   display: :0 screen: 0
   direct rendering: Yes
   server glx vendor string: Brian Paul
   server glx version string: 1.3 Mesa 3.4.2

10. Screensaver: there is nothing better in Linux than Jamie Zawinski's XScreenSaver, and there has never been a better version of XScreenSaver than the newish 4.0. Within 4.0, there are no screensaver modules more visually pleasing than the GLX ones -- the 3-D, OpenGL modules -- as long as you have hardware support. See details on getting this to work on Suse at http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/4046/1/

1. Firewire support -- requires a kernel other than Suse's original 2.4.10
2. Kernel building: see 12-2001 build and 01-2002 build.
3. Building a new kernel
4. Network File Server (not implemented)
5. Hotkeys on MS Natural Pro.
6. Advanced Power Management

See Maintenance.