[wplug] SuSE Questions

[Robert Coutch]

Responses added to the message below......


On Tuesday 30 December 2003 10:54 am, Benjamin Slavin wrote:
> Good morning, all,
>
> I've been making use of the past few days to configure a "Media Server" for
> my A/V setup. I decided to use SuSE since I wanted something that was easy
> to setup and that my girlfriend wouldn't mind  using.
>

You didn't mention what version of SuSE or any specifics about the computer.

> Coming from a Gentoo, Slackware and *BSD background, some things are
> confusing me, so I have a few questions:
>
> 1. One of the network adapters on the system is USB (due to lack of PCI
> slots). It works without any problems, except that durring startup the
> network tries to start itself before hotplug is initiated... therefore the
> network device doesn't d exist when it tries to run. I tried to move the /
> etc/rc.d/rc5.d/S05network link to /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/S08network (hotplug is
> 07), but at each reboot or after installing new packages, it appears to
> "fix" itself and put it back at 05. Is there any way to make this more
> permanent? I looked in the YaST runlevel editor, but it doesn't allow
> control over the startup order, so far as I can tell.
>

I'd just leave this alone unless it's causing a noticable delay in boot time.
This is the same situation when using a laptop with a PCMCIA or CardBus 
network card. 

> 2. The volume level seems to reset itself to 0 for both Master and PCM
> after each reboot, as well as muting both channels. Is there any way to get
> it to save the volume levels between boots?
>

If you're using KDE desktop you can (and should) set your preferred volume 
levels using KMix and then save those settings as the default.

You can setup ALSA for default volumes using the sound card setup module of 
Yast2.  Look in the hardware module of Yast2.  Edit the current sound card 
configuration and there is a screen with every volume parameter your sound 
card supports in there. Once you set these, they will restore each time you 
reboot.

> 3. DVD playback is poor. I installed libdvdcss and have even tried using
> non-protected DVDs, but the playback is choppy. It will play, then stutter.
> Based on the lights on the drive, I think that the reason is that the DVD
> drive taking too long to read data. (The video will pause, -then- the drive
> will light-up) Any suggestions for improved performance?
>

Are you using an accelerated video chipset (Nvidia, ATI, etc)?
Does X support the chipset for accelerated video?
You can run Sax2 to configure accelerated video.

You might try using Yast2 to turn on DMA access to the DVD drive but it should 
have done this for you if the drive supports it.

DVD performance will be determined by various factors including the CPU speed,
type of video hardware and DVD drive performance.


> 4. I am attempting to use apt-get to install Freevo (MythTV gave me
> problems compiling). It gives an error that YaST reported too:
>      "OpenOffice_org: Depends: libjawt.so but it is not installable"
> libjawt.so is in /usr/java/j2re1.4.2_03/lib/i386/, and that directory is in
> / etc/ld.so.conf
> Is there any way to force apt-get and YaST to either ignore what they view
> as a problem or get them to ignore it? I'm not even trying to update  the
> OOo packages.
>

I've never tried apt-get on SuSE but It's not a good idea to make Yast2 angry.
It also handles system updates and keeps track of dependancies.
Be careful.  I have the MythTV sources but haven't done anything with them.

You didn't mention if you tried MPlayer and Xine for DVD playback which come 
with SuSE 8.2.

I'm guessing you have a TV tuner card (same as I do) since you're working with 
MythTV and Freevo.

I have to sit down and learn to build RPM's for SuSE. then I'll build them and 
offer them to other SuSE users.  Just way too busy lately.

> Sorry about the longish list... figured it was better to send one large
> email than several smaller ones.
>
> Thanks so much!
>   --Ben Slavin
>
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