Notes on an Install
gkrellm looks awfully impressive on my 8-core box as compared to my laptop. But beware working from your mobile device while upgrading - I must have come off as strangely passive-aggressive with my "Fine" reply to a basis architect requesting sudo on a handful of boxes. I had meant to reply, "Done" but was auto-corrected! "What an ass that ehowton is!"
On to the notes - I needed someplace to keep these in an attempt to leave the wheel, as we know it, previously invented.
Building and running cisco anyconnect requires 32bit libraries. Lots of them. And 32bit firefox. Also be sure to:ln -s /etc/ssl/certs /opt/.cisco/certificates/ca
SUSE's lack of DKMS means compiling the virtualbox module. Though LXDE was added atop a basic (runlevel 3) installation, it uses a desktop kernel - the sources of which cannot be discovered through a zypper kernel source search. To add it therefore, run:zypper dup. And here's the command for copying a *.vdi, and the subsequent command to correct the UUID setting when you use a unix cp or Windows drag & drop:VBoxManage clonevdi Master.vdi Clone.vdi
./VBoxManage internalcommands setvdiuuid /path/to/virtualdisk.vdi
setvdiuuid changed to sethduuid in v4.0.4:
./VBoxManage internalcommands sethduuid /path/to/virtualdisk.vdi
(And if Cannot set a new UUID: VERR_VD_IMAGE_READ_ONLY try running PowerShell as Administrator)
pidgin didn't come with sound equipped, and it was frustrating trying to determine *why* it would not play. From Tools --> Preferences, in the Method drop down list, select Command (so it will highlight) and enter, aplay %s. Also, meanwhile (IBM SameTime) plugin for pidgin isn't listed in a zypper search for pidgin plugins because meanwhile's package name lists it as libpurple; zypper search meanwhile. And it requires a tweak of the ~/.purple/accounts.xml in order to work with upgraded server versions by adding or changing the following:30
8511
1
0
4608
Also works in Windows if you break your system with an incomplete ZYPPER UP and have to run your Windows Enterprise VM from a different hardware platform; find it in C:\Users\[ehowton]\AppData\Roaming\.purple (or simply 'run' %appdata% for us Minecraft types out there). BE SURE TO OPEN NOTEPAD AS ADMINISTRATOR.
LXDE doesn't have what you might call "frontend" multiple monitor support (mirror only) so run an xrandr for port names and resolutions, put the results in ~/screenlayout/shellscript.sh and call it from ~/.profile; #!/bin/sh
xrandr --output LVDS --mode 1680x1050 --pos 1680x0 --rotate normal --output VGA-0 --mode 1440x900 --pos 0x0 --rotate normal
Increasing the capacity of an undersized vbox Windows volume was something which plagued me for a very long time; migrating my remaining fully-operating Win7 Enterprise VM to the new platform required action. Once again, the bane of Google, "All you have to do is..." posts which at best misunderstand scenarios in which their simple fixes aren't applicable, I chose a path from my own experience, which thankfully worked:Install backup software, add two equal-sized [.vdi] virtual harddrives, image to one, restore to the other, stop the virtual machine and remove the backup drive and the old root drive, boot.
Inelegant, yet effective. That said, opening full-screen vmware consoles inside a full-screen vbox instance on an Intel-video equipped laptop over vpn? Yeah, that just sucks. In other news, growing my linux vm with the dd command did an admirable job of duplicating the smaller disk with a little gparted resizing-fu.
That which took me the second longest to work out was having a non-root user avatar display in the LDXM login screen while retaining password authentication. There is an overwhelming amount of incorrect/inaccurate data out there. The answer is two-fold; place an avatar (96x96 seems to be MSRP) in your home directory changing its name to .face, then copy that same avatar, naming it [username].png (or .jpg) here:
/usr/share/pixmaps/faces
Set login wallpaper here: SuSe_Start --> System --> Preferences --> lxdm-config
I also wanted to lock the screen with the Windows[flag]key-"L" combination. This required adding/replacing the following to the ~/.config/openbox/lxde-rc.xml file:
xscreensaver-command -lock
And lastly, if you run into an inexpensive local vps which offers openSUSE 11.4, it is NOT a good idea to get it and upgrade to 12.3 - stick to the German vps which offers it natively ;)
Everything else can be found in /etc/lxdm/lxdm.conf:
And to reduce the size of an otherwise unwieldy (vdi) disk file, I've done the linux one with great success:
run defrag in the guest (Windows)
nullify free space:
With Linux guest run this:
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/bigemptyfile bs=4096k
sudo rm -rf /bigemptyfile
With Windows guest, download SysinternalsSuite and run this:
sdelete -z
shutdown the guest VM
now run VBoxManage's compact command
VBoxManage.exe modifyhd thedisk.vdi --compact
This reduces the size.