Restricted Formats

Wasn't quite sure how to title this entry, but I guess it's just best to make it easy. This does have to do with Linux, so it does belong here and not in the Miscellany category.

It started a couple weeks ago after I updated Mei-chan, I was unable to play the video in mp4 format that I watched a couple days before that, I found it really strange, but didn't really look into it that much, so the next day, I converted what I was watching. Afterwards, I tested some other formats and was unable to play them. After some research, it was because all I wanted to play was under the "restricted format" category, so (I'm guessing) they were removed during that update. I tried to follow the guide I found, but I failed to notice a certain, crucial part of the instructions and ended up not working for me.

I decided to attempt to reverse what had been done, but ended up breaking GNOME and was met with ICEWM upon reboot. I looked for other GNOME Linux distros, as Ubuntu was Unity, and I've had troubles installing Debian properly (with GUI). I let Sabayon 13.08 download (Sabayon is now a rolling distribution, since Gentoo is) as I slept, and the next day, attempted to test VLC out, but Rigo decided to update Sabayon as a whole, which wasted a few hours and ran out of RAM. I did a slight retry, trying to make sure I was only doing VLC, but no luck, so I moved on to trying a test install on a "spare" hard drive. Something happened, to which I'm not sure of, but I think I can blame Sabayon for it, but GRUB kept saying a disk wasn't present and just stopped there.

I scrapped the test install, and went with a blind install, but was met with the same message. Since I was frustrated, I decided to scrap Sabayon and try to find something else. Then I remember finding Ubuntu GNOME while I was digging around the previous night, and downloaded it. After doing some testing, I found it worked well enough for what I wanted and was using Rhythmbox 2.99 instead of 3.0, which made me happy; I wasn't too ecstatic about GNOME 3.8, but it was better than 3.6, and so I went with it (I turned off the shell for the user menu that added the sleep and hibernate options).

I did the install, and came to the same GRUB error; I tried installing again and no change. I unplugged the other two drives (music drive and files drive), and was able to boot. I then plugged the drive under it, booted, and met with the same error. I then unplugged that drive, and plugged in the drive under that one, booted, and had no problems. I then use Parted Magic to look at the drive some, and found that it somehow got flagged as boot (along with the root drive that should have been the only one), so I remove the boot flag, and reboot with all three drives, but still had the problem.

I booted into Ubuntu GNOME live (because the lack of GParted on openSUSE live was against my better judgement) transferred all the music over to the files drive, recreated the partition table twice in GParted (just to be safe), formatted, then put the music back on. I rebooted, and then sat at a black screen with a blinking cursor. I decide there's probably some problem with the files drive as well since I formatted that drive way back with openSUSE 11.3, so I backed up whatever I wanted to keep handy or didn't have on the music drive, did the same as the music drive (minus one partition table recreation), then put everything back on. Booting up gave the same result.

As I went to bed, I thought of what could be different, why I was able to boot to live, but not to the hard drive, and eventually, before I fell asleep, I figured I should look in BIOS. The next morning, it took me a bit to remember, but I looked in BIOS, and it turns out that the drive order was completely backwards (files->music->root), so I fix it and double check the boot device order was correct before exiting. Sure enough, it's what was it and I was greeted with GNOME.

So I've been decently content up until this past Sunday (22nd) when I was unable to really do anything on the internet with Windows on Triela (I'm not going into all that much detail on this) at my friend's place and the next day after (making it Tuesday, since I was sick Monday) at home, I was still having problems, and I reinstalled Windows. I didn't really feel like doing much else, so I left it and worried about it yesterday (Wednesday the 25th), after all said and done, I went and looked up how to reinstall GRUB2 and was successful on the third attempt (first one I found gave me an error with no workaround, second one didn't actually install, and the third time I combined the two solutions).

Quite happy I didn't have to reinstall 13.1 at all. I decided to give the restricted format installation a try, since I had went over the page again a bit more thoroughly this past Sunday out of boredom and noticed I missed a step. I removed VLC, removed the repository for it, then proceeded with the instructions and rebooted. It worked!

Today, I decided to test with Melty, to see that it played before upgrading, then seeing it couldn't play after upgrading, both results were to my expectation. I then preformed the installation and then rebooted and was successful in playing the video.

So, I will be reinstalling 13.1 on Mei-Ren again and preforming the restricted format installation to be able to watch videos. While I love Rhythmbox 2.99, I'll still stick with Amarok because I know how to use zypper a lot better than apt-get, and I'm a lot more comfortable doing the upgrade with zypper than to wait for the software updater to pop up telling me there's stuff to install. I'm also giving up the fact that I can use hotkeys on the video window of VLC in Ubuntu GNOME, but it's not that big of a deal to me, since I've been dealing with it for quite sometime now.

Was quite a long journey that kinda ended where it started (?), but maybe it's a good thing. Few things I've learned:

• Sabayon ships with FGLRX on the disk and uses it by default for AMD/ATI GPUs (had to xdriver=radeon at boot)
• Ubuntu GNOME is an okay fall-back distribution
• Make sure drive order is good
• Boot flags have to be "formatted" away
• Read the entire instructions and follow verbosely to the end
• Rigo does things in ways I don't like
• I gave up on openSUSE too early

Melty 1

I was doing a deep clean earlier today, and I booted her up afterwards, opened the hardware monitoring program from CPUID, noticed the GPU temperature rising from about 49-50C; I looked at the fan, thinking I accidentally unplugged it when cleaning, and it wasn't spinning, but after taking the card out, the fan was plugged in. I then tried to spin the fan by hand, but it was much harder to do so than it should have been.

I played with the fan a bit to try to get it to spin better, but wasn't horribly successful. I got it to the point where it should spin okay. Tried it again, and it kinda worked, but the temps weren't really stable, so I took the card out again.

I decided to take the plastic heat-sink shell off and use the Vantec Spectrum Fan Card from Ziggy to put underneath the graphics card. I was worried that it wouldn't hold well, seeing as the fan card was made to be inserted into a PCI slot and not a PCIe x16, but after testing it out, the PCIe slot seemed to stabilize the card enough.

When I turned Melty on, and opened up the hardware monitor, I saw the GPU temperature at 32C! I was so surprised, but then again, it made sense, since the fans are cooling majority of the heat-sink. I haven't seen the temps go higher than 50C, but I'll let time run the course and see what happens.

I was wanting to email HIS and request a replacement fan, but on the site they posted that they will not send out a replacement cooler/fan because the user can damage the graphics card if done by themselves (obviously voiding the warranty). The fan mounts to the plastic shell - the fan being easily removable without removing the shell - and the fan's power cable is pretty free, so to be honest, I think it's a bit much to say they won't send out a replacement fan (I can understand the concern with the heat-sink though). Needless to say, I'm not going to bother and I'm going to stick with Sapphire's video cards like I have been. (By the way, the shell is screwed into the heat-sink, so removal of the shell requires removal of the heat-sink, of which I did without any problems.)

After letting the fan sit face-up for a while, the fan seemed easier to spin, but also still didn't spin right, leaving me to think it's a problem with the bearing. I think the bearing uses oil instead of grease and the oil flowed out of the bearing area and caused it to lock up. Only reason I can think as to why oil was used instead of grease is the cost (I'm assuming oil's cheaper than grease). Even though I'm sure that's the problem, there's not exactly a way for me to fix it, as I'm not sure how to separate the PCB of the fan from the mounting bracket (where the axle access probably is).

When I'm able to, I think I'm going to upgrade Melty to a 7770, since I won't have to upgrade the PSU to compensate. We'll see though.

openSUSE 13.1 Part 1

Well, nothing I noticed different from RC2, but that's probably a given, though I did notice that the network configuration changed a lot since 12.3, allowing you to configure IP/DNS/etc. separately (the old version required you to input a DNS if you were configuring the IP manually.

I've done 5 installs so far... Three on Triela and two on Mei-chan. First install on Triela was on the test partition to make sure VLC could be installed; the second was an install with BTRFS, which I found out halfway through the installation (after the reboot, before touching the manual configuration) that ext4 performs better than BTRFS; so the third installation was, obviously, with ext4. The first install on Mei-chan failed because a couple packages were broken (I was going to install XFCE and KDE along with GNOME), and so I tried again (without the XFCE and KDE) and it worked just fine.

I used the live disk to test VLC installation and 1080p playback on Mei-Ren (at the same time when I was testing on Triela), and didn't have any hiccups. And as usual, the hot keys don't work on the video window. Oh well.

I think I forgot to mention that after logging out of root after editing fstab, fstab's reloaded on login instead of boot.

I also found a separate program for additional trackpad options that aren't in the settings.

Fstab is also a lot cleaner, as it only contains physical partitions/drives (the proc and stuff like that aren't there any more).

I think that's all that I can really think of... Besides Rhythmbox being a bit weird on Triela and crashing when trying to play certain songs. I may write more, but I can't be certain, as I'm pretty tired, physically.

Lie-chan was easy and mostly uneventful (only problem I had was a slight glitch with the fonts after logging back in after changing the theme, which worked itself out); Melty on the other hand.... While trying to boot into GNOME live, something happened and it stalled or got stuck in some sort of loop, so I was forced to do a blind install on Melty. Luckily, nothing happened.

Another thing I forgot to mention is that the menu for certain programs (Rhythmbox, as that's the only one I've really seen so far) is interesting. Each "section" of the menu has its own arrow, which releases the sub-menu once clicked upon.


Well, I think that's it. I won't update for the next 3 years or until the next good LTS is released. I'll still continue to test the later releases as they come out.

(edit)

Seems that it's Rhythmbox itself that crashes when trying to play certain songs, but it changes what songs it crashes on per computer. When I open Rhythmbox via terminal and play a known song to make it crash, it gives me an undecipherable error maybe having something to do with cairo? If I was able to install the older version of Rhythmbox, I would, but since 13.1 ships with 3.0.1, there's not a whole lot I can do. Banshee works very similarly to Rhythmbox, but is very slow (probably because I have a lot of songs in my music library. It's slow enough, where I really can't use it.

Amarok works decently, but doesn't have a separate "now playing" list like Rhythmbox or Banshee. While it keeps the song it was playing, the next random song is random. Luckily, there's an option to shift the randomization, which I set to "Not Recently Played" to avoid hearing a song that I heard not too long ago (iTunes is horrible for it). Amarok does have a queue, but it's very lacking, only allowing you to move songs up and down and to delete the song from the queue or clear the queue. If they program it further to have it become the "now playing" section, I'd probably migrate to Amarok without a second thought. I'll use Amarok for the time being and keep an eye on Rhythmbox.

While this is annoying, it's no real reason to go back to 12.3. Not to mention, I really prefer 13.1, considering all the features I was looking forward to. It's just kinda sad I can't really do much but wait and play things by ear.

openSUSE 13.1 RC2

Tested it on Triela and haven't really noticed much different (the icon theme is still broken, which is also nothing new).

I don't remember well, but I'm quite sure I didn't need to log out and back in after installing ibus and ibus-anthy to put it into the input method section for RC1; I found that it didn't appear, so I decided to try logging out then in (well, for some weird reason, download.opensuse.org stopped responding), which then it appeared afterwards (along with a normal response with download.opensuse.org).

The only other problem I encountered was with VLC. While it installed just fine, it was somehow missing the h264 decoder and couldn't play the video I used to test. I then decided to try to use the VLC repository for factory, but it said that one of the necessary packages (a library if I remember correctly) couldn't be provided; I tried the repository for 12.3 with no avail either. I also tried to install the package itself, but there was an error in the repository and I ended up aborting. I'll try again when I can give more attention to what's going on (I was a bit distracted by anime XD).

I'll also test it on the Dell when I have a chance, though I'm not expecting to see anything different compared to last time (but at least I can test BTRFS a bit).

Oh, one thing I noticed since B1, I think it was, is that the option for the laptop lid close action is missing; what I mean is that there's a text entry, so it's supposed to be there, but there is no drop-down menu for it. I'm hoping this doesn't appear in the final release.

Other than that, I think 13.1 is just about ready for release, just a few of these problems need to be either squashed or "hidden" from the final release.

After testing it on the Dell, I haven't really seen much difference from RC1, at least, nothing that I remember.

I did end up "testing" it on Mei-chan, since I moved the wireless card to the PCIe x1 slot, forgetting why I had it in the other PCIe x16 slot. The biggest surprise was that the dual screening defaulted to extending the desktop instead of the usual mirroring; I was also able to rearrange the way the screens were set up without the hassle that I remember it (where it said it was outside the boundaries or something like that). If this is the case and it's stable, FGLRX may become a thing of the past for me. After doing that, I moved the wireless card back, finding out that the reason was that FGLRX couldn't find the graphics card. I'm assuming the wireless card in the x1 slot was confusing FGLRX, and so it just left me with CLI instead of the GNOME.

Side note, one of my friends that runs Debian said that SCIM no longer worked for him, and after I asked him for the kernel version, I concluded that SCIM is incompatible with the 3.x kernel. He has yet to use IBUS, but I'm sure he'll get to it when he does.

By UTC time, there's a couple days left until 13.1 is released, and I'll probably grab the full install DVD, as I want to write it to a regular DVD instead of using the +RWs that I've been using for the milestones, betas, and release candidates (I have several +RWs that I've never really done anything with, and with the nature of the GNOME live being about 900MB, along with the nature of testing almost each step of development release, it's more efficient to use the +RWs instead of regular DVDs.

I'm looking forward to 13.1 as long as VLC works, since that seems to be the only main reason that would hold me back. It will be nice to have a good LTS so I won't have to worry much about updating every 18 months. While 18 months sounds like a long time, If you think about it, it kinda really isn't, especially when you consider that the next release needs to be tested for specific use beforehand to make sure it works properly before adaptation. Sure, it's still not a huge deal in most cases, but think about the computers you don't use a lot. Especially if you forget to test them, and the new release doesn't work quite right, you're stuck. That is the reason why I like LTS.

It seems if I had read the feature list on the openSUSE wiki, I would have known about the input method integration and some of the other surprises I had. I'll have to make a habit of poking through that with upcoming releases.

That's it until the release.

openSUSE 13.1 RC1 Part 2

One thing I forgot to mention that I noticed was that there is also a section in the settings that allows programs to be run at start-up. Very nice for those who want to start up, walk away for a bit, then come back and be ready to go (assuming auto-login is true XD).

openSUSE 13.1 RC1 Part 1

Well, it was released a day late... Oh well.

I didn't really notice too many new things... BUT! I did manage to figure out why Ibus/SCIM weren't working. With 12.3, Ibus had its own part of the system (like it was part of the "top-level" programs), so you only needed to configure Ibus and it would work. But that's not the case in 13.1 - Ibus no longer has the same part of the system like it used to, so after installation, it requires a bit more configuration (Ibus is not "top-level" any more). I'll have to test it a bit later on the Dell, but I think Anthy still needs to be set up in the Ibus configuration before configuring on the system side. In the settings, there's the "Region & Language" section, where the input methods are added in (normally nothing is there, so the default input method must be added first, otherwise the system will probably use the other as the default). After adding in the input methods, if a different hot key to switch between input methods is preferred, the option is under "Keyboards" -> "Shortcuts" (tab) -> "Typing". (The default is Super+Space, but I prefer it to be Ctrl+Alt+Space. I'll try it out with SCIM as well to see if it's usable or dead.)

I don't know if anything was wrong with M1, M4, or B1, and it was just my lack of poking around that made me think I was screwed for typing in Japanese.

The Iris icon theme doesn't work still, probably won't, who knows. Not a huge deal with it though, seeing as that it was aesthetic tweak and not purely necessary to function.

One thing though, is that there's no support for exFAT (I'm not sure if it was default with 12.3 or not, but I'll have to check.), which kinda prevents me from using my flash drive that has the Wifi password for my network. I did, however, find fuse-exfat that I can use, though it's a bit roundabout since I have to use the ethernet to get the package to read the password on the drive to connect to the Wifi at home (to be honest, I have another flash drive that isn't exFAT that has the password). Native support would be nice, but isn't wholly necessary.

Well, I think the only other thing to really test is VLC, and to just do a pseudo-setup. Other than that, I think once 13.1 is out in November (I think), I'll be migrating, as it's going to be LTS (Yay! :D) version (It'll also be the first time I've adapted an x.1 version XD)

I'll write more after more testing.

(edit)

SCIM doesn't work at all, as it doesn't list Anthy in the input methods list; however, I found that Ibus doesn't need any configuration at all, so all that needs to be done is to select it in the input methods.

The only problem I have with VLC is that none of the hot keys work when the video window is selected (not even on the video window border :/ ). I read into it once and it has something to do with that the VLC packages aren't built right and maybe a missing package I need to install? I'm not horribly concerned with it, seeing as I usually have the controller window focused to be able to use the hot keys (I use the full screen controls in the case of single-screening).

Oh, one of the minor changes I forgot to mention, was that the "Date & Time" section in settings is much different now. It has a slider for "automatic time" (NTP), "automatic time zone", then a section for setting the time and date manually (you click on the bar and then the window pops up), a section to set the time zone manually (I find it gets a bit funky), and last, as slider for 12/24 hour clock (24 hour is default). With the time zone, when I set it in the installation and have "hardware clock set to NTP" checked, the time is UTC time once I finally get into GNOME, and then I have to select a different time zone (for some reason, it thinks my time zone is UTC when it's not), then select my time zone again (which fixes it). Not sure if it's a small bug, but I suppose I'll see if it's fixed in RC2.

The main thing I need to get used to is that the regular control panel has the second-highest control over settings (the first-highest would obviously be YaST), so I should toy there first before elsewhere. Not sure where the tweak tool would be, but probably third-highest. Things have changed quite a bit since 11.3, and some are a lot less apparent than others; I just need to find the less apparent ones that are important and adapt to them (I can adapt pretty quickly once I have an understanding of it).

I think that's all for now, unless something else pops up. XD

openSUSE 13.1 Beta 1

Okay. A bit of GUI revamp, mainly what I noticed was the top right menu, which is consolidated to one menu. Most of it should be self-evident, maybe except the user, which just allows you to log out.

The other thing that was revamped was Nautilus (and some other certain programs) where the window bar was removed and the innards of the window redone to allow the user to close the window and such. Before applying the theme I use, Nautilus would glitch out and either close or give me this weird looking window (to which i had to close anyway); I just find it weird that nautilus stabilized after a used a different theme.

Ibus and SCIM still don't work (:/)

The tweak took also had the same GUI revamp as nautilus, and also was reordered and cleaned up a bit as well.

During installation, it asks to use BTRFS. I installed it on the Dell and it seemed to make things work a bit faster. I remember last time I tried to use BTRFS, the system couldn't boot properly. For Triela, I tried it, but after declining the bootloader installation, it notified me along the lines of that it would be impossible to boot... and it was right. (XD)

I'm assuming that booting using BTRFS uses a different method, so it essentially "chain-loads" into it. While I really wanted to try BTRFS out on Triela, I wasn't willing to install and control the bootloader from 13.1, since I'll be installing RC1 over B1 when that time comes.