opensuse11.2 - Amarok - mp3

Just so that I remember:
YaST - Software repositories - Add - Community Repositories - add the Packman repository -
Software - switch the libxine1 from openSUSE to Packman (can be controlled under the "Versions" tab in the Software install dialog, add libxine1-codecs! I missed it the first time and Amarok still couldn't play mp3 files.

ssh connection refused

tried to scp or ssh from one openSUSE 11.2 (host A) to another openSUSE 11.2 (host B).

On host A I get the following:

# scp -vvv file.pdf user_name@192.168.1.7:/tmp
Executing: program /usr/bin/ssh host 192.168.1.7, user user_name, command scp -v -t /tmp
OpenSSH_5.2p1, OpenSSL 0.9.8k 25 Mar 2009
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: Applying options for *
debug2: ssh_connect: needpriv 0
debug1: Connecting to 192.168.1.7 [192.168.1.7] port 22.
debug1: connect to address 192.168.1.7 port 22: Connection refused
ssh: connect to host 192.168.1.7 port 22: Connection refused
lost connection

On host B nothing in the logs, for testing I turned off the firewall to make sure it's not the culprit, although port 22 was already opened anyways. Didn't help.

Solution - on host B (192.168.1.7) :
---------

# rcsshd start

starting application after su _another_user_

While I'm logged in as user_1, I'd like to start an application for user_2 but I get a D-Bus session error:

username_1@hostname:~> su username_2
Password:
username_2@hostname:/home/username_1> /usr/bin/kmail
(25123)/: Cannot find the D-Bus session server


KDE4 Troubleshooting documents a solution to it:

"If you get
KUniqueApplication: Cannot find the D-Bus session server
make sure you can access the display, e.g. type
xclock
then a clock must appear on the screen. If it does and the error persists, start your shell using
start your shell using

dbus-launch xterm

and start your program in there."

VmWare-Workstation 7 - Windows 7 installation

After you enter the license key, Windows 7 Setup loads and then stalls and produces the following error:

Install Windows
The unattend answer file contains an invalid product key. Either remove the invalid key or provide a valid product key in the unattend answer file to proceed with Windows installation.

The suggestion at:
social.answers.microsoft.com resolved the problem.

Solution: "disable the floppy disk option"

HowTo disable the floppy disk option:

Create a New Virtual Machine, once it's created the new VM-name (Windows7 in my case) is displayed in the Sidebar under Favorites.
Right click on it and select "Settings" at the bottom.
Under Device select Floppy
The "Device Status" - "Connect at power on" needs to be _deselected_
For Connection change to "Use a physical drive:" not that this should matter, when it isn't allowed to connect, but I changed the default option to use the floppy image to use the physical drive, just in case.

Then save the settings and Power on the virtual machine.

VmWare-Workstation 7 - Could not open existing VM

After the installation of VmWare Workstation 7 I had to adjust something:
I just tried the following:

- Open a virtual machine or team

- Pointed it to an existing WinXP.vmx

- The Tab for the VM was created but when I tried to start it I got the following error:

Could not open /dev/vmmon: No such file or directory.
Please make sure that the kernel module `vmmon' is loaded.

# lsmod | grep vmmon
returned nothing, so I had to load the module:
# modprobe vmmon

After the module was loaded:
#lsmod | grep vmmon
vmmon 87308 0

- I was able to start the WinXP Virtual Machine

VmWare-Workstation 7 on openSUSE 11.2

I just installed VMware-Workstation-Full-7.0.0-203739 32-bit on openSUSE 11.2

I had already gcc, gcc++, make and kernel-source installed. But I was missing the kernel-devel and kernel-syms packages and got an error: "gcc and kernel headers must be installed"

The easiest is to install kernel-syms and YaST will resolve the dependencies and install all additional kernel-devel packages needed.
Afterwards run /usr/bin/vmware again and the installer will run through the compile stuff.

Virtualbox on openSUSE 11.2

* make sure virtualbox-ose and virtualbox-ose-kmp-desktop are installed, they come with the OSS repository

* the first time Virtualbox OSE is started from the Startmenue -> System a pop-up window informs you:

"You are not a member of the "vboxusers" group. Please add yourself to this group before starting VirtualBox. You could do it using: Yast / Security and Users / User and Group management. Don't forget re-login your user account!"

* add yourself to the vboxusers group -> YaST -> Security and Users -> User and Group management -> choose the user you want to add the group to and enter "Edit", in the next following dialog, under "Details", vboxusers is one of the "Additional Groups" and can be selected.
or on the command line enter: groupmod --add-user vboxusers

Now you have to logout and login again so that the changes take effect.

* start Virtualbox OSE and in my case it converted previous configuration files over. The virtualmachines from my previous opensuse 11.1 installation were still available

I was able to start a SLES11 Virtualbox previously installed under Virtualbox openSUSE 11.1 right away.

Postfix sending mail & /etc/resolv.con on openSUSE 11.2

Sometimes my openSUSE 11.2 client is connected to a SLES10 router and DHCP Server, connected to another Linksys router.

I just realized that my connection dropped every 15 minutes or so, and I saw that my mail was still in the mailqueue and wasn't send out.

Sending an email with postfix I get the following error:
(Host or domain name not found. Name service error for name=relay.host.com type=MX: Host not found, try again)

So something is wrong with the DNS setting.

# host relay.host.com returns only the
relay.host.com has address _IP_address

I checked the /etc/resolv.conf and find the IP of the router in it, although my DHCP server should deliver the nameserver. Apparently the IP of the router doesn't work well.

In /etc/resolv.conf I read:

# Before you change this file manually, consider to define the
# static DNS configuration using the following variables in the
# /etc/sysconfig/network/config file:
# NETCONFIG_DNS_STATIC_SEARCHLIST
# NETCONFIG_DNS_STATIC_SERVERS
# NETCONFIG_DNS_FORWARDER
# or disable DNS configuration updates via netconfig by setting:
# NETCONFIG_DNS_POLICY=''
#


My settings:
YaST2 - Network Settings - "Global options":
Traditional Method with ifup

Hostname/DNS
Modify DNS configuration -> Use Default Policy

with the following DNS variables in /etc/sysconfig/network/config

NETCONFIG_DNS_FORWARDER="resolver"
NETCONFIG_DNS_STATIC_SEARCHLIST=""
NETCONFIG_DNS_STATIC_SERVERS=""
NETCONFIG_DNS_POLICY="auto"

In /etc/resolv.conf the nameserver entry is pointing to the access point/Linksys router: nameserver 192.168.1.1



In YaST2 I changed Hostname/DNS settings to:
Modify DNS configuration -> Only Manually

The following changes were made automatically to /etc/sysconfig/network/config:

NETCONFIG_DNS_FORWARDER="resolver"
NETCONFIG_DNS_STATIC_SEARCHLIST=""
NETCONFIG_DNS_STATIC_SERVERS=""
NETCONFIG_DNS_POLICY=""

The last one: NETCONFIG_DNS_POLICY="" is exactly the change needed and also documented in /etc/resolv.conf as well.

After I made the change:

# host relay.host.com returns
relay.host.com has address _IP_address
relay.host.com mail is handled by 5 relay.host.com

And my mail gets delivered too.

# postqueue -f

Flushes the email stuck in the mailqueue as well.

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 (address bar and bookmarks)

I had problems saving bookmarks, the only place I could save them was in "Unsorted Bookmarks" or one out of three folder randomly in the list of bookmarks. very odd. Basically I was never able to scroll through the list of my bookmark folder and pick one to save the bookmark under.

The second problem: the address bar has square edges and is a layer over another address bar with round edges.

These two problems don't seem to be related but yet they are.

When I installed the new openSUSE 11.2 with the new Firefox version 3.5, the installation preserved my whole Firefox configuration (since I use /home on a separate partition), including a Theme, that is not available for this version of Firefox.

Once I changed the Theme, the problems were gone.

Dropbox on openSUSE 11.2

Although on the Dropbox download side I read: "Dropbox is supported on x86 and x86_64 versions of Ubuntu 9.04, Ubuntu 8.10, Ubuntu 8.04, Ubuntu 7.10, and Fedora Core 9. There have also been reports of users getting Dropbox to work on different versions of Gentoo, Arch Linux, OpenSUSE, and Debian."

I searched the openSUSE Build Service if a package is available. Yes, there is, I installed the nautilus-dropbox-0.6.1-1.1.i586.rpm for openSUSE 11.2. After the installation an Icon was available in the panel and I could use my login credentials to start using it.
Very easy!
Make sure, before you install nautilus-dropbox, you'll need to install those packages to resolve dependency issues upfront:

* GTK 2.12 or higher
* GLib 2.14 or higher
* Nautilus 2.16 or higher
* Libnotify 0.4.4 or higher

For user who don't want to use Nautilus, there is a CLI interface available as well. The above dropbox download link points to the instructions how to set up the script.

There is a Dropbox iPhone appliation available as well. Now I can easily sync my iPhone with my computer.