openSUSE 11.0 Release Notes

Copyright © 2008 Novell, Inc.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included as the file fdl.txt.

The release notes are under constant development. Download the newest version as part of the Internet test or refer to http://www.suse.com/relnotes/i386/openSUSE/11.0/RELEASE-NOTES.en.html.

These release notes cover the following areas:

In the Start-Up Manual, find information about installation and basic system configuration. In the Reference Guide, the system configuration is explained in detail. Find basic information on GNOME and KDE in the QuickStart Guides. Detailed information on using AppArmor is provided by the AppArmor Administration Guide.

General
  1. Press Ctrl-Alt-Backspace Twice to Terminate the X Server
  2. YaST Gtk and Qt Front-Ends
Update
  1. Squid 3.0
  2. Xgl Versus AIGLX
Technical
  1. RPM Packages Now LZMA Compressed
  2. Printing Legacy Encoded Text Files
  3. CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) and UTF-8 Encoding
  4. Major Update of dhcpcd (1.x to 3.x)
  5. Inode Size on the Ext3 Filesystem Increased
  6. SuSEfirewall2: New Variables Starting with FW_SERVICES_ACCEPT_RELATED_
  7. Fingerprint Reader Devices and Encrypted Home Directories
  8. TabletPC Configuration: xsetwacom Parameters

General

Press Ctrl-Alt-Backspace Twice to Terminate the X Server

Pressing Ctrl-Alt-Backspace on GNOME, KDE, or any other graphical desktop does not terminate the X server any longer. If you press Ctrl-Alt-Backspace within 2 seconds again, it terminates the X server. On most hardware you hear a beep after the first Ctrl-Alt-Backspace press.

In the past it was possible to accidentally terminate an X server using this key combination. Nevertheless, if you want to continue to use this key combination to terminate your X server, remove the following line from the ServerFlags section of the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file:

Option "ZapWarning" "on"

For more information, see the xorg.conf manpage.

YaST Gtk and Qt Front-Ends

By default, the new YaST gtk front-end runs on the GNOME desktop, and the YaST qt front-end on all the other desktops. Feature-wise, the gtk front-end is very similar to the qt front-end described in the manuals.

An exception is the gtk software management module (see the Start-Up guide in Chapter 3), which differs considerably from the qt port. To start the qt flavor on the GNOME desktop, invoke it as root at the command-line with:

yast2 --qt

Vice versa on KDE, if you are interested in the gtk front-end:

yast2 --gtk

Update

Squid 3.0

Squid 3.0 is now available. This version supports the Internet Content Adaptation Protocol (ICAP) and Edge Side Includes (ESI).

Check your /etc/squid/squid.conf manually— that is only required after an update. For example, after the update proceed as follows:

cp /etc/squid/squid.conf /etc/squid/squid.conf.2.6
cp /etc/squid/squid.conf.rpmnew /etc/squid/squid.conf

Then transfer settings done for version 2.6 from /etc/squid/squid.conf.2.6 to /etc/squid/squid.conf. For reference, /etc/squid/squid.conf.default coming with squid 3.0 is also available.

Note the following changes:

Features not available any longer:

  • refresh_stale_hit option. Not yet ported.
  • ability to follow X-Forwarded-For. Not yet ported.
  • Full caching of Vary/ETag using If-None-Match. Only basic Vary cache
    supported. Not yet ported.
  • Mapping of server error messages. Not yet ported.
  • http_access2 access directive. Not yet ported.
  • Location header rewrites. Not yet ported.
  • umask directive. Not yet ported.
  • wais_relay. Feature dropped as it's equivalent to cache_peer +
    cache_peer_access.
  • urlgroup. Not yet ported.
  • collapsed forwarding. Not yet ported.

For more information, see file:/usr/share/doc/packages/squid3/RELEASENOTES.html after package installation.

Xgl Versus AIGLX

On openSUSE 11.0 it is no longer possible to enable or disable Xgl with a graphical tool (such as gnome-xgl-settings in the past). Only the command line tool xgl-switch is still left to do this job. Instead AIGLX is now always enabled on supported hardware. There are still some issues with AIGLX (e.g., Xvideo is usually slower, OpenGL applications are misplaced when you rotate compiz' cube), but the majority of our customers are requesting to have AIGLX enabled by default. If you prefer Xgl over AIGLX use the command line tool xgl-switch to enable it:

xgl-switch --enable-xgl

If there are problems after enabling it (Xserver crashes, etc.) disable it again by running

xgl-switch --disable-xgl

The proprietary NVIDIA driver needs neither AIGLX nor Xgl for running with compositing managers as it provides its own framework.

To enable Compiz, use "Desktop Effects (simple-ccsm)" application from the application menu.

Technical

RPM Packages Now LZMA Compressed

RPM Packages in openSUSE 11.0 are now LZMA compressed. LZMA provides a better compression rate and is faster on decompression.

The rpm packager in openSUSE 10.3 and earlier cannot handle such RPM packages. If you want to open or install LZMA compressed RPMs on 10.3, install the rpm packager from 11.0 on your 10.3 system first. Note, this is not supported by Novell.

As a packager, remember to build packages for 10.3 and earlier without LZMA compression. Do not expect user to install a new rpm packager on old systems.

Printing Legacy Encoded Text Files

The printing system based on CUPS 1.3.x (Common UNIX Printing System) no longer converts legacy encoded text files such as ISO-8859-1, windows-1252, and Asian encodings on its own. Only UTF-8 and thus ASCII is supported.

As a work-around to print legacy encoded text files, convert before sending them to the CUPS server. To print an ISO-8859-1 text file, use:

iconv -f iso-8859-1 -t utf-8 filename.txt | lp -d printer

Note, printing of PDF or PS or such binary files (JPEG, PNG, etc.) works as before.

CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) and UTF-8 Encoding

Since CUPS 1.3.4 the cupsd accepts only UTF-8 encoded data. Because this change is backward incompatible, older CUPS clients such as CUPS 1.1 may no longer work—for example, see http://www.cups.org/newsgroups.php?gcups.general+T+Q%22unsupported+charset%22.

Applications communicating with the cupsd such as hp-setup or the YaST printer configuration, do no longer work if neither a plain 7-bit ASCII nor a UTF-8 locale is used. The problem does not occur if you use a default UTF-8 locate as pre-configured on openSUSE since several years.

Major Update of dhcpcd (1.x to 3.x)

A major update of the dhcpcd package (from 1.x to 3.x) is available. Command line options are different. For a complete list check the dhcpcd manpage and the /usr/share/doc/packages/dhcpcd/dhcpcd-1-vs-3 file.

Inode Size on the Ext3 Filesystem Increased

The inode size on the ext3 filesystem is increased from 128 to 256 by default. This change breaks many existing ext3 tools such as the windows tool EXTFS.

If you depend on such tools, install openSUSE with the old value.

SuSEfirewall2: New Variables Starting with FW_SERVICES_ACCEPT_RELATED_

SuSEfirewall2 implements a subtle change regarding packets that are considered RELATED by netfilter.

For example, to allow finer grained filtering of Samba broadcast packets, RELATED packets are no longer accepted unconditionally. The new variables starting with FW_SERVICES_ACCEPT_RELATED_ have been introduced to allow restricting RELATED packets handling to certain networks, protocols and ports.

This means adding connection tracking modules (conntrack modules) to FW_LOAD_MODULES does no longer automatically result in accepting the packets tagged by those modules. Additionally, you must set variables starting with FW_SERVICES_ACCEPT_RELATED_ to a suitable value.

Fingerprint Reader Devices and Encrypted Home Directories

If you want to use a fingerprint reader device, you must not encrypt the home directory. Otherwise logging in will fail, because decrypting during login is not possible in combination with an active fingerprint reader device.

To work around this limitation, set up a separate directory outside of the home directory and encrypt it manually.

TabletPC Configuration: xsetwacom Parameters

Use the following xsetwacom Parameters now: