My openSUSE 13 Journal 1: Getting IBM Notes 9.0.1 to work!

Its a new year (belated) and 13.1 has been out for quite a while now.  I had it running in a VM as an evaluation and did not really move my desktop setup from 12.3 up to 13.1 until last weekend.

In the meantime, a few readers has corresponded with me via comments in my previous post about getting IBM Lotus Notes 9 Social Edition to work on 13.1.  My initial favourable responses were based purely on a very quick install and startup tests (it all looked good).  Unfortunately, there appears to be a little bug with the combination of openSUSE 13.1 and IBM Notes 9.0.1 but it is a very small one and the resolution is ridiculously simple (but not immediately apparent).

I hope to blog more on 13.1 at a later date but will only focus on getting IBM Notes 9.0.1 working on 13.1 in this entry.  I have been having some difficulties in my personal health lately and that only takes time away from pursuing my hobbies (blogging here being one of them).

First, I would like to acknowledge Craig for bringing to my attention the challenge and so proactively providing the links to his discussions in the Lotus forum (here).  I would also like to Thank Ashu for his encouraging comments left on my previous blog entry and hope this entry will be just as useful to those out there who share the same fascination of using openSUSE and IBM Notes.

Installation - Easy as pie

As documented in previous blog entries, installation of IBM Notes 9.0.1 is really a piece of cake.  You download the binaries (NOTES_9.0.1_LINUX_RPM_EN.tar), untar it into an empty directory and you will find 5 RPMs (i586 - 32-bit) and a few other files.

As root, execute the following in the same directory:

zypper in *.rpm

Done!  You will find the IBM Notes icon in the Recently Installed Apps folder in KDE4.  Alternatively, the launch icon can also be found in the KDE::Applications::Office::More Programs::IBM Notes.  Right-click and Add to Favourites to easily find it the next time.

First sign of trouble

First sign of trouble, at least for me, only occurred after successfully launching IBM Notes and when I get into my mailbox, view calendar or log into SameTime.  The GUI would freeze and then IBM Notes would terminate and NSD runs.

My openSUSE 12 Journal 14: IBM Notes 9 on 12.3

Syed Tassawur Hussain, this is for you.  Thank you for prodding and giving me the motivation to complete this blog entry on how to install the GA version of IBM Notes 9 Social Edition.

Back in the days of using 12.2, IBM Notes 9 was in Beta and I have blogged about how I installed and configured this combination here.

With my move to 12.3, I was going to install the now GA version of IBM Notes 9.  Given how impressed I was with 12.3, and all the additional software and customizations applied in 12.2 seems to transfer seemlessly to 12.3, I was naturally mildly surprised (and annoyed) that installation of IBM Notes 9 did not go quite as smoothly as Notes 9 Beta on 12.2.

Let me jump to the crux of the matter, one particular library (libjpeg62) has been removed from the media and default online repositories of 12.3.  This libjpeg62 was previously in 12.2 and earlier versions of openSUSE.  As such, IBM Notes 9 installer and even zypper were not able to install execute successfully.

Here's how I arrive at this conclusion and was able to successfully install IBM Notes 9 on openSUSE 12.3.  While I have not tried this on the enterprise flavour of openSUSE (ie SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11), should you encounter the same challenges, the steps below may be of help.

My openSUSE 12 Journal 13: NetworkManager Config for Cisco LEAP Wireless

This is my 100th blog entry!  

In short, I wasted a few days and a weekend to get my shiny new 12.3 to connect with my company's Cisco LEAP (henceforth referred to as just LEAP) wireless network.

For those who do not have a requirement to connect to wifi via LEAP but are curious anyways, please see this link for LEAP.

To save you the same grief, here is the answer (see screenshot below) on how to configure NetworkManager:

The one on the Left WORKED; the one on the Right did NOT work for me

Disclaimer: Your mileage may vary (YMMV) because I did not test this against another LEAP wifi network outside of my company's implementation.

My openSUSE 12 Journal 11: VirtualBox

This should be an interesting entry in light of the recent developments in the roadmap of both Fedora & openSUSE where MySQL is being ditched for MariaDB.  This will affect new enterprise deployments in the next 18-24 months when the changes cascades into the next major release of RHEL & SLES.

At the heart of these changes is the perceived lack of openness & transparency of commercial juggernauts shepherding open source projects.  Another example is LibreOffice, being a fork of OpenOffice a few years back, and is now the default in openSUSE distributions.

VirtualBox was originally from Innotek GmbH and they were acquired by  Sun Microsystems Inc. in February 2008 which in turn got acquired by  Oracle Corporation in January 2010.  Virtualbox is not shipped as a default on openSUSE but you can install it very easily because the binaries are available in the default online repositories.

Personally, I think VirtualBox is the 'BEST' virtualization software for the desktop. I would go with KVM or even Xen for enterprise server virtualization. However, for virtualizing Windows or Linux on a desktop for quick testing purposes,  I'll pick Virtualbox anytime for its ease of use & free of cost attributes.

Easy Install Method

My openSUSE 12 Journal - 10: Chinese text input (fcitx)

I need Simplified Chinese text input capability for my desktop.  Back in openSUSE 12.1 and prior versions, it was SCIM that provided that functionality.  In openSUSE 12.2, FCITX replaces SCIM.

How do you add secondary language input capabilities?

This section applies to all openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise versions.  Thanks to YaST, the way to enable this functionality has remained consistent over the years.

In YaST, find and select Language (under System).

In the Secondary Languages section, select and put a check mark next to Simplified Chinese... and any other language of your choice.
Click Ok button and YaST will install the proper software and language package to enable this functionality.

(Optional):  You might want to log out and log back in to your account, just to be sure there is a new language input icon in your System Tray.  In my experience, the icon shows up without a need to log out and back in again.


Frustration #1:  Where is the configuration panel?

My openSUSE 12 Journal - 9: Upgrading to Stable Kernel 3.7.4

I took every step and every precaution, with fear and trembling, but I finally took the plunge to upgraded my default kernel (3.4.11) in openSUSE 12.2 to the latest stable kernel (3.7.4).

You know what?  This is the best thing I could have ever done for my laptop!!!

Special Thanks to Mike Veltman, appreciate your guidance and encouragement.

What made me do it?
I have been using openSUSE 12.2 for over 3+ weeks and have noticed some performance issues from a desktop productivity perspective.  This was confirmed when speaking with Mike and also confirmed by a comment from Jack Bauer on my previous blog entry.

Scenario:  Try copying a large amount of files (total file size of say over 1Gb) from your hard disk to an external USB drive.  During the file transfer (doesn't matter if you initiate the transfer via commandline or GUI), the rest of the desktop (except the mouse pointer) is practically dead and unresponsive.  At best, a simple task of opening a new tab on Firefox to surf will take over 10 seconds.  If you want to open LibreOffice to read a doc/spreadsheet, you can forget-about-it.

This was initially tolerated because I would schedule large file backups in the evening after work.  However, it is starting to get to me because I don't recall earlier openSUSE 11.3, 11.4 and 12.1 ever giving me such issues.  The final straw came this week and its my Windows VM... it was running well but I have to put PGP whole disk encryption on the VM.  As expected the Windows VM slowed down but I also noticed its slowing my host as well.

How I did it?

My openSUSE 12 Journal - 8: IBM Notes 9.0 public beta

I was going to install Lotus Notes 8.5.3 on openSUSE 12.2... but a good friend of mine (Lotus geek) informed me that the next great version IBM Notes 9.0 is ready as an open beta.  He challenged me to live life on the edge again and, I accepted!

Link to download IBM Notes/Domino 9.0 public beta
Link to the public beta forum.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that IBM has dropped the Lotus brand and name this new major version IBM Notes 9.0 Social Edition.  This is a great statement of intent and direction for this product/solution.

Installation:

Pre-requisite:  You will need to uninstall previous versions of Lotus Notes (if any).  Note that installing both 8.5.x and 9.0b is not supported (officially).

After you have downloaded the tarball for Notes 9.0b, untar it.  You will notice a bunch of RPMs and a smartupgrade.sh script.  Run/execute the script as root.  Its really that simple.

[Update on 23 Jan 2013]:  If running smartupgrade.sh script did not work for you, don't fret.  In the same directory where all the ibm_* rpms reside.  Execute, as root, zypper in ibm_*.rpm and let zypper figure out all the dependencies for you.  All good. 

The Notes 9.0b icon can be found via Application Launcher -> Applications -> Office -> More Programs -> IBM Notes.  You can right-click and select Add to Favourites so that you don't have to navigate that much just to start it later.

Note that in your very first startup, it will launch a text console for you to accept the license... just in case you miss it and wonder why you are stuck at the splash screen and nothing happens.

My openSUSE 12 Journal - 7: Printing to PDF

One more thing... that I forgot to mention in my previous entry is the topic of printing to PDF.

I'm quite surprised this capability is not included in the base openSUSE 12.2 install since we have OSS version of the Adobe PDF reader (Okular).

Scenario/Use Case:
You need to print out a document directly into a PDF format file, instead of killing trees.  Some examples are:

• Printing online receipts directly into a PDF for your electronic filing
• Converting some page or document into PDF format using the Print function

Do note that if your document can be opened and edited in LibreOffice (comes with 12.2), and you want to convert that document into a PDF, you can do that by clicking the PDF button within LibreOffice.

Solution:

My openSUSE 12 Journal - 6: Hello 12.2!

More than a year (12+ months) since my last entry... obviously lots have happened... BUT

Its a new year (2013), a new job, a new Laptop and a new openSUSE 12.2!  I'll stop right there before I go off on a tangent, seeing & proclaiming trends where none existed previously.

Details:

• openSUSE 12.2 x86_64 (64-bit) - KDE desktop (default)
• Toshiba Tecra R840 (Intel i5, 4Gb RAM, 320Gb Hdd, Intel HD integrated graphics)
• Dual-boot with Windows 7 (/dev/sda1) and openSUSE (/dev/sda2)

Installation:
Smooth as silk is all I can say and something that has come to be expected.

Given the dual-boot setup, I created my own disk partitioning scheme.  So this step deviated from the otherwise straight-forward install (ie click next till the end).

Disk partition scheme:

• /dev/sda1 - 100Gb - original factory installed Windows 7 (size shrunk to 100Gb)
• /dev/sda2 - 100Gb - root partition of openSUSE 12.2 ('/') formatted to ext4
• /dev/sda3 - 98Gb - extended partition
• /dev/sda5 - 6Gb - SWAP partition
• /dev/sda6 - 92Gb - common data partition formatted to NTFS (read/write for both Win7 & openSUSE 12.2)

At install time, I did not format the common data partition.  Instead, I left it blank (unformatted) and used Windows 7 to format it much later.  Once formatted, this common data partition will be known as D:\ drive on Windows 7.

Reboot into openSUSE 12.2 and use YaST Partitioner to set a mount point.  I usually mount this under /mnt/common.  Now, openSUSE 12.2 will automatically mount the common data partition in /mnt/common on boot.

The only outstanding part is that /mnt/common is accessible by root (super-user) but normal users access is troublesome.  To make /mnt/common read-writeable by normal user, I edit the mount options of /mnt/common in the /etc/fstab file.  Example, changed the options in bold from original (first line below) to the second:

/dev/disk/by-id/ata-xxxxxx-part6 /mnt/common          ntfs-3g    user,users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0

/dev/disk/by-id/ata-xxxxxx-part6 /mnt/common          ntfs-3g    uid=han,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0

where han in uid=han is my normal user account on openSUSE 12.2.

There might be a more user-friendly way to do this but I did not explore since I'm comfortable editing the /etc/fstab. Readers who knows how this can be done, please feel free to leave a comment.  Thanks.


Grub vs Grub2:
I chose to stick with Grub instead of the newer Grub2 boot loader.  The reason is simple, I could easily edit the boot options via /boot/grub/menu.lst because its a text file.  In Grub2, this is non-trivial and until they have an easier editing interface, I'll stick with Grub.


Additional Software

My openSUSE 12 Journal - 4: Minor Frustrations

This is my fourth journal entry for openSUSE 12.1 and it has been two weeks of operational use on both my Thinkpad and home PC.  Here are some additional minor frustrations and some workarounds... and yes, I have posted on the openSUSE forums (just in case you'd ask).

Boot 12.1 using the old System V init
In my first journal entry, I complained the lack of "chattiness" during boot since the adoption of Systemd.  You can easily switch to the old System V init on boot.  At the grub boot loader screen (usual 8 seconds delay) and before you hit Enter to boot, press the F5 button to switch from default to System V.  Now, press Enter to boot and press the Esc key during the splash screen to see the familiar System V init messages.

[Update on 6 Dec 2011]: Tired of pressing F5 every time on boot? Append the following to the end of the line:
init=/sbin/sysvinit
For example, in /boot/grub/menu.lst, at the end of the line starting with "kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.1.0-1.2-desktop...", append the line above and save the file.  On the next boot, you can verify the change in the Boot Options field.  Press Enter and you will boot up 12.1 under the old System V init.

Air Video Server on openSUSE 12.1

In short, Air Video is a client-server product that streams, via live conversion, videos of many formats to any iOS device (eg iPhone, iPad etc).  The server software is free-of-charge but only runs on Mac OSX and Windows.  The client is also free-of-charge for iOS devices but "crippled".  If you like the solution, you pay for the client.

Since the Air Video Server is written in Java and uses a customized version of FFMPEG, it would be possible to run it on Linux.  The folks behind Air Video though supportive but are NOT offering official support for Linux. 

I have been successful in making Air Video Server (AVS) work on openSUSE 11.3, 11.4 and 12.1.  Here are the steps:

My openSUSE 12 Journal - 3: Lotus Notes 8.5.3

Lotus Notes is what I use at work and the latest v8.5.3 works well on openSUSE 11.4.  Although it installed without a hitch on 12.1, things goes awry when I start using it.  Here are my observations and how I managed to get it working again.  :)

For starters, Lotus Notes 8.5.3 only managed to render about half of its interface.  For example, I could see my inbox but email preview pane is blank.  Integrated SameTime worked but workspaces and replication tabs were blank too.  I suspect it could be some incompatibility or confusion with the GTK libs and I was right...  Google is my friend and I discovered a brilliant soul who had the same challenge, created a bug report against openSUSE and even created a workaround/fix.

[Update on 27 Nov 2011]: Oops, it occurred to me that Lotus Notes 8.5.3 is actually 32-bit running on 64-bit openSUSE 12.1.  That means the RPM created by Stefan Lijewski should have worked.  I cannot recall why I came to the previous conclusion.  I have just tried the 32-bit RPM and it worked for me.  Therefore, I am correcting my entry below. 

Unfortunately for me, I could not use his nicely packaged RPM and online repository because I am using 64-bit openSUSE 12.1. 

The easy way is to use a 1-click install via Stefan Lijewski's online repository.

The easy but manual way is to download the RPM before you manually execute a zypper in lotus-notes-gnome3-1-1.1.i586.rpm

In both cases, you will need to verify that your Lotus Notes launch icon has been updated to use the new notes-wrapper script instead of the original notes script in /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/ directory.

Finally, the hard way (if you're so inclined to experience compiling your own code) is the original method I used below.

Below is how I got Lotus Notes 8.5.3 working on openSUSE 12.1 (64-bit).

1.  Download the workaround fix from https://github.com/sgh/lotus-notes_gtk2.23.3/downloads

2.  Un-tar the fix, tar zxvf sgh-lotus-notes_gtk2.23.3-2028e8e.tar.gz

3.  You will need to install additional packages before you can compile the fix.  As root, zypper in make gcc gtk2-devel glibc-devel-32bit gcc-32bit

4.  In the sgh-lotus-notes_gtk2.23.3-2028e8e subdirectory, compile the fix with make

5.  If make completed with success, you should have a new file libnotesgtkfix.so in the directory.  Copy it and notes-wrapper to installed Lotus Notes directory /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/.

6.  Last and final step, edit your Lotus Notes icons (kmenuedit if using KDE4) and change the default launch script to execute notes-wrapper instead.

That's it.  Lotus Notes 8.5.3 should function normally... and its all good for the last 3 days for me.

I hear this would not be a challenge with the newer Lotus Notes 8.5.4 (yet to be officially released).  We shall see when we get there.  :)

Focus stealing settings in KDE and Gnome on SUSE

This is an update from my previous post "Focus! User is King". Thanks to comments posted by 13thSlayer and JosP pointing me in the right direction, I found what I was looking for and I'd like to share it in this entry.

Specifically, I've tried this with KDE/openSUSE 11.3 and Gnome/SLES 11 SP1. I'm fairly certain that this should apply to other variants like Gnome/openSUSE and KDE/SLED.

KDE

If you are using KDE, start Configure Desktop and select Window Behavior. Next, select Window Behavior in the panel on the left and find the Focus Stealing prevention level field. The default is Low. I changed it to Medium. You may choose to go more aggressive with High or Extreme.






Gnome

If you are using Gnome, you will need to bring up gconf-editor from the Terminal. With the Gnome Configuration Editor window opened, from the left-hand panel, navigate / -> apps -> metacity -> general. In the right-hand panel, scroll to look for the variable focus_new_window.

The default value for focus_new_window is smart. You only have the option to change this to strict.




To wrap up, in typical YMMV fashion, changing these settings may or may not suit you personally but at least you now have an option to experiment. I have found the Medium setting in KDE worked for me compared to the default Low setting. I have not fully tested this for Gnome just yet.

Enjoy!

PS: I'm going on vacation for a week and will not be monitoring/moderating the comments (if any).

My Mac-SUSE Journey - Part 2

This is Part 2 of how I got openSUSE 11.3 (64-bit) working fully on a MacBook Pro 13" (2010 model). Here is the link to Part 1.

First, here are some shots of booting up MacBook Pro into openSUSE 11.3, taken from my old Nokia phone camera (and transferred via bluetooth to my MacSUSE) :




With openSUSE 11.3 installed and booted up, here are the configuration steps to get the most out of your MacBook Pro:

Wireless Driver

All that's required is the right Broadcom wifi driver. Start YaST, click on Software followed by Software Repositories.



Click on the Add button and select Specify URL... and click Next. Enter "Packman" in the Repository Name field and this link in the URL field: http://packman.unixheads.com/suse/11.3/ and click Next to complete. Verify that Packman is now listed as a repository and click Ok to exit.

Click on Software Management, , enter "Broadcom" in the Search field and click Search. Select and click to install broadcom-wl and broadcom-wl-kmp-desktop followed by the Accept button.



Reboot and you'll have Wifi up and running.




3D Desktop Effects with nVidia driver

This is optional since the default noveau driver works. However, if you want to turn on the fancy 3D Desktop Effects, you will need to install the proprietary nVidia driver.

With reference to steps above, in Software Repositories, you will need to add another software repository named nVidia and URL is ftp://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/11.3/

Next, in Software Management, search for "nvidia" and select and install nvidia-gfxG02-kmp-desktop package.

Either reboot or log out of your current session to start the newly installed nVidia drivers. To enable 3D Desktop Effects, start Configure Desktop and, under Look & Feel section, click Desktop and check the "Enable desktop effects". Don't forget to click the Apply button.




Configuring Audio

Audio is essential and all there is to make this work is to make 2 small configuration changes.

First, in YaST, select Hardware section followed by Sound. In Sound Configuration, select the default device (0, nVidia Corporation) and click Edit. In Sound Card Advanced Options, edit and add the value "mbp55" for the model. Click Next and Ok to complete.



Second and final step is to click on the Volume icon and click Mixer. In Mixer window, from menu bar, click Settings followed by Configure Channels... Select and drag the Front Speaker channels from the left (Available channels) to the right (Visible channels). Click Ok.



To test, start Firefox and surf to Youtube or any website with audio. You can use the Fn + F11 & Fn + F12 keys for volume control.


Keyboard Hotkeys

Fortunately, someone has written code to enable the MacBook Pro keyboard Hotkeys. This project is called pommed by Julien Blache. Even better than that, Alin Marin Elena has modified & compiled the latest version 1.34 (that supports this MacBook Pro model) specifically for openSUSE 11.3.

All that's required is to add another Software Repository called "Alin Marin Elena" and URL is http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/ealin:/apple/openSUSE_11.3/

In Software Management, search for pommed and install pommed and gpommed. Ensure the pommed service is automatically started on boot, execute chkconfig -s pommed on as root at the Terminal.

To start pommed manually, execute /etc/init.d/pommed start as root and you should be able to control the Screen Brightness (Fn+F1 & Fn+F2) and Keyboard Backlight (Fn+F5 & Fn+ F6).


Reboot properly

Unfortunately, while you can shutdown properly, you will hang the system if you choose to reboot in openSUSE. With Thanks to Alin again, he showed how to make openSUSE reboot the machine correctly.

In short, you need to edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file and add the flag reboot=pci to the kernel. Further, to prevent this flag from being removed when you upgrade your kernel, you will need to add this flag to the relevant variables in the /etc/sysconfig/bootloader file.

Thoughts & Conclusions

I have a working openSUSE 11.3 system running smoothly (well, you still can't beat Mac OS X since its tuned for this hardware) enough. The base openSUSE 11.3 took up 3.5-4.0Gb of disk space so I have plenty left over. Plus I can plug in a secondary USB/FireWire drive so its good.

I am using KVM to virtualize SLES and Windows. I refer to my other blog entry on getting started with KVM as a reference.

Finally, on the MacBook Pro, I use the Mac OS X more than openSUSE 11.3 because it meets most of my needs... except when I really need openSUSE. Besides, its always fun to see the look on them faces when they see openSUSE/KDE4 running on a MacBook Pro.

PS: Embedding this annoying clip introduced to me by Issac, my nephew.

My Mac-SUSE Journey - Part 1

After many months of consideration and research, I bought a brand new MacBook Pro 13" in early October. I needed a handy appliance where I can do Photos, Movies, Music, browse the web... iPhone is too small, iPad is nice but not computationally powerful or mature/proven. After spending close to 4 weeks on my Macbook Pro (version 7,1), I'm a very happy customer.

It wasn't long before, 2 days post-acquisition really, I started wondering about putting SUSE on it. Sure, I've discovered Terminal & X11 in Mac OS X and it works great. I use VirtualBox to virtualize SLES & openSUSE. But I still wanna have SUSE run natively to do KVM, maybe Xen and just because I can...

I am not the first, nor the last, to do this so I will acknowledge the wealth of information & helpful folks out there on the Web (see reference section further below).

Before we begin, please indulge my trip down memory lane... my very first computer was the Apple PC-IIe and it looks like the picture below... and who could forget the timeless Karateka... filling my little mind with boundless fluid moves... that does very little in real life... well... it did get me into trouble a few times... only a few.



My next brush with Apple was during my undergraduate days where I spent many hours doing tutorials and projects in the Mathematics/Statistics/Simulation labs filled with rows of Macintoshes (see pic below)... good times.



I graduated just as the technicolor iMac G3 invaded the campus.

The Mac hardware and software has come a long way and I'm very impressed and pleased with my purchase. Despite my previous encounters with the Mac, about the only thing familiar was the good old Finder and that static menu bar at the top. As I use Mac OS X "Snow Leopard", I find good things/ideas that should be implemented in openSUSE/KDE... but I will blog about this in more detail another time.

Enough rambling, here are the steps to installing openSUSE 11.3 (64-bit) onto a Macbook Pro 13" (2010 edition) running Mac OS X 10.6.4:


Disk Partitioning

My hard disk was upgraded from 250Gb to 320Gb. I decided to take 25Gb away for openSUSE 11.3. I did not use the Boot Camp Assistant utility on Mac OS X but instead used the Disk Utility.



As shown in screenshot above, I shrunk my Mac OS X partition from 320Gb to 295Gb. Next, I split the remaining free space into 21Gb for my root partition and 4Gb for swap partition. You can format them as DOS/FAT and let openSUSE reformat them at installation.


Dual-boot Setup

Now that some disk space has been carved up for openSUSE 11.3, its time to make the MacBook Pro dual-boot. Unfortunately, the usual Grub bootloader doesn't work here. To spare you (and myself) the details, the way to dual-boot a MacBook Pro is to use rEFIt (pronounced Refit).

Download the freely available rEFIt, version 0.14 at the time, and install it. I followed the documentation and installed it via the "Automatic Installation with the Installer Package" section at http://refit.sourceforge.net/doc/c1s1_install.html

To verify you've installed this correctly, reboot your MacBook Pro and you should see a boot menu on startup where you use the arrow and Enter keys to select which OS to boot. You should only see one option at this time since you have not installed a second OS on the MacBook Pro yet.


Installation

Pop in the openSUSE 11.3 (64-bit) installation DVD into the drive and shutdown Mac OS X. Power-on the MacBook Pro and press and hold the "c" button so that it will boot from the DVD drive. I usually press and hold the "c" button till I hear the DVD drive spinning up the media before I let go.

You should see the usual stuff when installing openSUSE, the kernel and initrd will load, nice fancy splash screen shows up and you select Installation to start the process. Pretty straightforward.

The most important part of the installation is disk partitioning because you really do NOT want to install openSUSE over Mac OS X. Thanks to the simple partitioning scheme where rEFIt has the first partition and Mac OS X has the second partition of 295Gb, that's easy to spot. When you reach that part of the installation where openSUSE installer proposes a disk layout, do NOT accept the defaults but instead choose to do Custom Partitioning and ensure that you do NOT touch that first and second partition. Select the 21Gb partition, format it with your favourite filesystem (ext3 for me) and mount it as root /. Next select the 4Gb partition, format it as Swap.



The next equally important part of the installation is the Grub Boot Loader. Since we are relying on rEFIt to dual-boot, we need to ensure that Grub does not intrude and writes itself in the Master Boot Record (MBR). Instead, ensure that Grub is only installed to the Root partition (/dev/sda3 and NOT to MBR). Further, ensure the "Write generic Boot Code to MBR" is UNChecked so nothing gets written to the MBR.



The rest of the installation is a non-event.


Cannot boot up openSUSE without the DVD loaded?

There is a chance, post-installation, that you realized that you can boot into Mac OS X but when you select to boot into Linux, your openSUSE 11.3 does not boot up and some vague error message like no operating system found. However, you are able to boot from the openSUSE 11.3 installation DVD and choosing to boot from hard disk instead, you can successfully boot up the installed openSUSE 11.3.

If this is the case, its highly likely the GPT/MBR may be out of sync. To resolve this, boot into openSUSE 11.3 and first use fdisk -l to check that only the openSUSE partition is set to boot (see first screenshot below). Next, use parted to check that the boot flag only applies to the first partition (rEFIt) and nothing else (see second screenshot below).



Finally, double-check the Grub Boot Loader setup via YaST -> System -> Boot Loader and verify the settings are correct (compared to the screenshots in previous section above).


Conclusions (to be continued)

The vanilla openSUSE 11.3, will be 85-90% functional. Some important items that works out of the box:

• Graphics card is detected and proper resolution rendered
• Keyboard works (in general but you can specify Apple Macbook keyboard in the Control Panel to improve mappings)
• Touchpad works (but I do find it a tad sensitive so you can adjust it under Control Panel) or plug in your favourite USB mouse
  
• Disk and DVD drive works
• iSight webcam works with Kopete
• Ethernet (LAN port)
  
• FireWire and USB ports
  
• External display port
  
• SD Card Reader
  

The following is a list of things that does not work right away but will require addition work (like installing additional software packages) to get going:

• Wireless does not work as its a Broadcom chip. You will require a LAN cable (hey, at least networking works!) to retrieve and install the appropriate broadcom drivers.
• Default open source nouveau driver works for the nVidia GeForce 320M graphics card but if you want 3D desktop effects, you will need to download and install the proprietary nVidia driver
• Audio does not work but its more a configuration issue than driver issue
• You cannot adjust the screen brightness or keyboard backlight. You will need to install additional drivers for this to work

I will be addressing these in Part 2 of my blog. Stay tuned.


On a Side Note

I'd like to share why I did not install SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 11 SP1 or earlier version of openSUSE 11.2. I did attempt it and both SLED 11 SP1 and openSUSE 11.2 DVD boots up but fails to recognized the DVD drive after the installation kernel/initrd loads. It kinda hangs at loading udev. I'm too lazy to figure out which module I have to load by hand and since openSUSE 11.3 works, its good enough for me.


Links/References to other related pages

General Guide & starting point - http://old-en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_on_a_Mac

Alin Marin Elena's entry specific to my MacBook Pro (7,1) model and openSUSE 11.3 - http://alin.elenaworld.net/?p=921

Howto based on openSUSE 11.2 & older 2009 MacBook Pro model - http://forums.opensuse.org/english/information-new-users/unreviewed-how-faq/426413-how-install-opensuse-11-2-mid-2009-macbook-pro.html

Forum post on Grub & Booting issues - http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-help-here/install-boot-login/430718-macbook-pro-grub-2.html#post2113355

openSUSE Forum is a great source of information and discussions - http://forums.opensuse.org/