systemd - boot into emergency shell

when the the grub2 graphic boot screen appears press 'e', the grub text mode "setparams 'OS'" opens. move the error keys down and find the entry "linux".
go to end of the line to the last boot option and enter: systemd.unit=emergency.target
press F10 to boot and the system will boot into emergency mode/shell (just once).

on a side note: if there are more kernel installed find the entry (linux) matching the kernel you want to add the boot option.

permanent entries are added at the end of the line: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="" in the file /etc/default/grub.

(tested on openSUSE 13.1 beta) more infos on systemd: doc.openSUSE: Chapter 8. The systemd daemon

firefox - echofon

loved the app, because it gave me twitter updates in a small pop-up from where I could choose to my liking what to open and what not.
Now I'm getting: Can’t login to Twitter. (410 Gone (account_verify_credentials)) (for quite some time actually).
Today I got the time to look at it and found:Echofon for Firefox dies after Twitter API changes – Here’s how to get it back
I'm going to try it out later.

Update: works like a charm.

kmix high CPU usage

All of a sudden at startup kmix CPU usage spiked. Sometimes up to 70%.

After deleting the files in ~/.kde4/share/apps/kmix/profiles it's back to normal.

In the directory was a large (5MB) "PulseAudio.Playback_Streams.1.default.xml" file.

A forums entry at forums.opensuse.org pointed me to the file.

Searching online for that file will also bring up some Bugs reporting 100% CPU usage.

Nexus 7 - Security Setting

I installed an app VPN one click and for that I had to setup a PIN for "Screen lock".

This page explains how to set the screen lock. However since then I wasn't able to change the Screen lock to "Slide" (None, Slide and Face Unlock were grayed out).  Instead I needed to keep putting in the PIN.

I had to remove the VPN profiles, and that allowed me to see and choose one of the other options again.

Firefox 13.0 - saving incorrect bookmarks

Trying to bookmark a page a complete unrelated URL was saved and even trying to change it in "Show all Bookmarks" - "Location" didn't save the changes.

 To see if any of my extension are causing it I started Firefox without them, per Firefox Troubleshoot suggestions. Still wrong bookmarks were saved.

Then I was pretty sure the bookmarks file was corrupted and thought I'll give it a try and delete the "places.sqlite" file.

On openSUSE I just deleted the: my_home/.mozilla/firefox/_my_profile.default/places.sqlite and restarted Firefox.

Sure enough it was the solution to the problem for now.

Firefox also offers a howto to fix it.

flush swap

Once in a while swap fills up and there's 0 free swap space, so I like to flush it and make room.

swapoff -a
swapon -a

does the trick.

However you have to make sure to close applications consuming a lot of %MEM (see the output of "top") before doing this. In my case free Mem, was less than used Swap and I got:

 # swapoff -a
swapoff: /dev/sda2: swapoff failed: Cannot allocate memory

After closing Firefox which was using 34% of MEM at that time, swapoff and swapon worked well and I got 0 used Swap.

cannot execute binary file

trying to execute a binary file located on a NFS mount and get:

bash: ./_binary_: cannot execute binary file

thought I might miss the "exec" mount option, but no, the answer is here: forums.fedoraforum.org

"This message appears if you e.g. try to execute a 64 bit program on a 32 bit system. Please check with the "file" command whether the program fits your architecture."

"zypper up" error

Installation of _package_ failed:
(with --nodeps --force) Error: Subprocess failed. Error: RPM failed: error: db3 error(-30987) from dbcursor->c_get: DB_PAGE_NOTFOUND: Requested page not found
error: error(-30987) getting "" records from Requireversion index
error: db3 error(-30987) from dbcursor->c_get: DB_PAGE_NOTFOUND: Requested page not found
error: error(-30987) getting "" records from Requireversion index
error: db3 error(-30987) from dbcursor->c_get: DB_PAGE_NOTFOUND: Requested page not found
error: error(-30987) getting "" records from Requireversion index
error: db3 error(-30987) from dbcursor->c_get: DB_PAGE_NOTFOUND: Requested page not found
error: error(-30987) getting "" records from Requireversion index


When I tried to run a rebuild of the rpm database as root:

# rpm -rebuilddb
rpm: arguments to --root (-r) must begin with a /

Try:
user@host:~> su -c 'rpm --rebuilddb'

VMware-Workstation no 32-bit CPU support anymore

grrr
just tried to install VMware-Workstation-Full-8.0.0-.i386.bundle on my 32bit workstation and got the error:

VMware Installer
"One or more of your processors does not have the necessary 64bit extensions to run VMware virtual machines."

A quick search is telling me why:

VMware communities forum:

Question:
"Is there any chance that support for 32bit CPUs (P4) will return in 8.x?"

Answer:
"No, 32-bit CPU support won't be coming back

We dropped 32-bit CPU support to make our code simpler and easier to maintain, to improve performance, and to remove constraints going forward. Continuing to support 32-bit CPUs also would have been a burden for development and for testing. Since it's no longer possible to buy 32-bit CPUs (aside from some old 32-bit Atoms), we don't believe that supporting them is worth the trouble.

Unfortunately, if you need to continue using a 32-bit CPU, you will need to use Workstation 7."

Here you have it, you need a 64-bit VT-capable CPU. Obviously this machine I'm trying to install it on doesn't have it :(

Dropbox uses port 17500

I just read at speedguide.net:

"Dropbox LanSync Protocol (db-lsp) also uses port 17500 (TCP/UDP). It is used to synchronize file catalogs between Dropbox clients on a local network."

So when you see something like this on your LAN:

22:30:04.224001 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 0, offset 0, flags [DF], proto: UDP (17), length: 156) _IP_.17500 > _IP_.255.17500: [udp sum ok] UDP, length 128

Wow they use the the same port Trojans are known to use.
Don't freak out and check your Dropbox settings. Under Preferences -> General uncheck the "Enable LAN sync" box.