Shawn D. King

Well, after many failed attempts, I finally have OpenSuSE 11.4 installed and running properly on the old Compaq.

The primary issue is the system’s usage of a SiS 660 video card. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the card, chipset, performance, etc. The problem is with the auto-detect function of the OS (or windowing GUI).

OpenSuSE used to utilize SaX as a display configuration tool. Support was dropped in OS11.3 in favor of autodetection. That’s fine–if it works. And as often happens, mine was a case where it wouldn’t.

Fortunately, the developers still allow the system to recognize the xorg.conf configuration file. All of my searching on the internet turned up exactly nothing useful. Basically, I was told to “rebuild” xorg.conf. Well, instead of doing that, I just copied the old file from my 11.2 HDD and I’m back up and running. I just hope I don’t have the keep 11.2 around just so I can fix display issues, although I do have a backup of my xorg.conf file. I also hope the dev team doesn’t decide to stop all recognition of xorg.conf prior to development of SaX3.

Hmm… now I’m unable to get MySQL off the ground. I haven’t worked with the LAMP stack since I did a system rebuild on the new HDD, but MySQL is included in the SUSE distro. Shouldn’t be a problem, right?

Running the command mysqld start produces a most interesting message: “Can’t create test file ‘/var/lib/mysql/…’”. Apparently the /var/lib/mysql directory doesn’t even exist. O.o

Someone over at linuxquestions.org suggested another user with a similar issue try mysqld_safe &. Didn’t work: It still complains that the needed directories and files simply do not exist. Hmpt!

Well, it pays to keep reading. Last post in the thread was the ticket: I needed to use service mysql start and all is well.

I managed to install NetBeans and get it working on the Linux box today. Rather an adventure trying to figure out the directory and file permissions, but it is accomplished. If I thought it would help, I’d consider spending the money for the NB certification. But I don’t foresee that particular piece of wallpaper as a vital element of the employment acquisition strategy.

I’ve also downloaded pfSense personal firewall. Tami told me yesterday that she heard that a fresh install of Windows XP can become compromised in less than one second after connection to the internet for software updates. Ugh. Going to have to download in install antivirus and firewall stuff prior to connecting the next system build.

I’m going to have to start publishing posts on open-source related items. I have encountered considerable difficulty in finding answers to various questions and issues when the solutions are piecemeal across multiple websites, or when I find a “solution” that’s little more helpful than, “Read the ‘man’ pages!”

I’m certainly not an open-source expert–far from it. But the lack of cohesive documentation is most frustrating. Hopefully, I can keep sufficiently detailed notes to refresh my memory for future projects, and be helpful to anyone else who’s had to stumble through similar issues.

Currently, I’m running OpenSuSE 11.2 (2.6.31.14-0.6-desktop) on an old Compaq Presario (1.8GHz AMD Semptron 3000+ CPU). Graphics driver issues prevent me from upgrading to OpenSuSE 11.3. Since Sax2 is no longer used starting with 11.3, I haven’t found minimal-hassle means of configuring the latest version of OpenSuSE with the SiS 660 video card. Meh, someday, I suppose.