GNOME 3.0 Live image release 1.5.0 available

Hi all,

I just push a new GNOME 3.0 live image labelled as 1.5.0 (yes, I forgot to push 1.4.0 after I built it, so we are at 1.5.0 now ;)

No big changes, it is based on GNOME 3.0.2 + some additional fixes.

As always, it can be downloaded from http://www.gnome.org/getting-gnome/

For people interested, here are some download hits (it doesn't include SUSE Studio appliance nor promo dvd which is also available from GNOME ftp) :

on GNOME 3.0 release day : 4526 hits
April :  145904 hits
May : 46551 hits
June : 24747 hits
July : 23611 hits
August (from 1 to 15) : 13063 hits

Enjoy !

Map for Desktop Summit 2011

I've cooked with other people from #gnomefr channel a Google Map with the various useful addresses for Desktop Summit 2011.

It is available here, you can also get KML file or import this map in your favorite software (for Android users, I suggest using Locus Free which can download offline OpenStreetMap data and merge our map on it, no roaming data needed !).

Berlin, Berlin

I've just finish slides for my talk From GIT to your custom OS image which will be on Sunday 7 August 15:10 - 15:40 at Rm3038. I'll explain how GNOME 3 Live images were built and how you can easily do the same for your project.

I'll also be on openSUSE booth and helping for Football event which is sponsored by


See you in Berlin !

Status update on systemd for openSUSE Factory

Hi all,

here is a update on the work done on systemd for Factory :

(beware, post is long !)

• basic support for systemctl in chkconfig and insserv is done : it is pending review by maintainer before integration
• support for --root in systemctl was merged upstream and will be used by chkconfig/insserv patches above.
• a patch has been submitted to upstream systemd to parse insserv.conf : this patch only handles the "system facility" part of insserv.conf and automatically adds depencies specified in the file
• quick investigation on Yast2 to adapt runlevel editor for systemctl support : we really need help from other people, as I don't have any knowledge of Yast internal and it seems the yast dbus client part might be missing some parts, needed for runlevel editor to talk with systemd.
• no work done on /usr as separate partition : it is not a systemd issue in itself but from other programs which might be using data from /usr before /usr is available. The best solution would be to mount /usr from initrd => help needed !!
• (open)SUSE is using unofficial LSB target named $ALL which is supposed to put services requiring it at the end of the boot sequence (or at the beginning of shutdown sequence); After discussing with upstream : on a static boot system (sysvinit), it is easy to resolve such dependencies, but it isn't on a dynamic system (systemd). There is a ugly hack to handle that (creating a ALL.target file which is starting after default.target is done) but it would be probably better to just fix the 4 initscripts which are still using $ALL ( amazon-late, stoppreload, Susefirewall2_setup and vboxes). I'll open bug for them.
• X-Interactive support in systemd is not working properly : it will only work before getty is started and is broken if you try to start a service after boot. We need to transition packages which are still using X-Interactive to systemd-ask-password (which takes care of the async conversation). Only two packages need to be ported :
• apache2, when querying password for SSL certificate : apache allows to start a script to handle the password request. We only need to plug the script and configuration part in our package
  and get it used when booting with systemd.
• openvpn : this one is a bit complex because we can either write a daemon which would do the interface between systemd and openvpn management interface or we can try to patch openvpn to have a similar feature as apache and get this patch upstreamed. The latter has the preference of systemd upstream.
• For both packages, help is welcome.
• For compability with sysvinit, support for from /etc/insserv.conf in systemd was not added, so we could remove X-Interactive from openvpn/httpd sysvinit scripts but still have the function when booting from /sbin/init, thanks to /etc/insserv.conf list.
• /etc/init.d/kbd was not handled properly : this should be fixed inFactory today or tomorrow, with systemd taking care of setting up keyboard properly. However, we might need to improve /etc/sysconfig/keyboard parsing in systemd. More tests are needed (and of course, help is welcome).
• discussion in progress on opensuse-packaging mailing list and upstream on a set of cross distribution RPM macros to handle systemd unit files.

As you can see, we still have some work to do, but we need everybody help : either on the issues I mentioned (feel free to say "I want to help on this" here) or to do more tests or even to start creating .service files (but we still need to fix the issues listed above).

Thanks everybody for your attention.

I would be great if we could get the ball moving and maybe get one of
the next Factory milestone be a "systemd" test release but to reach this
point, we need YOU !

The road to systemd for openSUSE 12.1

Hi all,



systemd is coming for next openSUSE (12.1) scheduled next fall.

I'll help for systemd integration in openSUSE Factory and will act as an interface between you (openSUSE testers, packagers, developers) and systemd upstream.

As you might guess, switching boot manager is not a trivial task and issues will be found. So, we want to have as much feedback and testing as possible, to try to tackle as much (if not all) issues in time for 12.1.

Here is our action plan, in several phases:

• phase 1: detecting current issues with systemd. Install systemd package and "manually" boot with it, by adding "init=/bin/systemd" at you kernel boot command line. In this setup, we want to find ALL the issues caused by switching to systemd, so please, check systemd on Factory status page and follow the instructions there to fill bug reports. We also want to ensure there is no regression, when using legacy sysvinit initscripts with systemd as boot manager.
• phase 2: systemd-sysvinit package installed by default and replace sysvinit.
• phase 3: providing systemd unit files to replace legacy sysvinit initscripts: this is a huge task which won't be completed before openSUSE 12.1, but it can be parallelized among a lot of people (ideally, each packager should be able to create unit systemd file). And we should also split this effort in manageable milestones :
• phase 3.1: GNOME and KDE live CDs should only use "native" systemd, without any sysvinit involved
• phase 3.2: installed system using GNOME and KDE live CDs be a "native" systemd (this involves testing additional paths in live installer)
• phase 3.3: install from DVD for GNOME and KDE should be "native" systemd

Of course, providing systemd unit file should not be a pure "openSUSE" task, because the ultimate goal for those files is to be cross-distribution and merged in relevant upstream projects. And we also don't want to duplicate effort which is starting in other distributions like Fedora, so, collaboration is key. I strongly recommend reading systemd for Administrators, Part III post about the conversion (and also all other posts : systemd for Administrators #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7,#8 they are highly instructive).

For discussing / helping with systemd integration for Factory, please use opensuse-factory mailing list or go to #opensuse-factory IRC channel on Freenode.

We need your help to make sure openSUSE 12.1 will use systemd at 200% ;)

GNOME 3 Live image release 1.3.0 - VirtualBox, here we come

Hi all,



good news for Virtual Machine addicts : VirtualBox team has fixed issues which were preventing VirtualBox to work properly with GNOME Shell. You need VirtualBox release 4.0.8 (minimum) and GNOME 3 live image release 1.3.0 (it contains updated VirtualBox guest additions, required for openGL).

To download the image :  http://www.gnome.org/getting-gnome/

Enjoy.

ISO image for GNOME3 promo DVD available for download

Hi all,



a quick post for people who want the GNOME 3 promo DVD iso image (it is based on 1.1.0 image, combining both x86 and x86-64 images and some demo video and music).

You can download it at : http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/misc/promo-dvd/

Beware this image will not be updated, it is just there for archiving purpose.