# zypper install nut

Next you need to edit /etc/ups/ups.conf and make an entry for your UPS driver and serial port.

[myups]
driver = bcmxcp
port = /dev/ttyUSB0
desc = “Local UPS”

Next I started the UPS driver manually in debug mode so I could see what was going on. The nice thing about this driver is it will auto-discover the UPS serial port speed.

# /usr/lib/ups/driver/bcmxcp -a myups -D

In a separate terminal window, start upsd.

# upsd

Now you should be able to query the UPS:

# upsc myups@localhost

Because I was just collecting statistics, I wasn’t interested in using upsd to automatically shutdown servers or anything fancy but that is possible.

Instead, it’s buried in the Gnome Configuration Editor which makes it really hard to find so here are the steps to fix this:

1) Computer -> More Applications

2) System -> Gnome Configuration Editor

The setting that needs to be changed is:

3) /apps/panel/applets/window_list_screen0/prefs/display_all_workspaces

You can navigate down the tree or use the “Find” function.

That’s it! Have a lot of fun!

Update: see the first comment for an equally obscure but perhaps easier method.

SUSE Studio lets you build your own custom linux distribution using SUSE as the starting point. The process requires only a few mouse clicks and is so fast and simple any Geeko can do it ;)

Step 1: choose a starting point for your build. Options range from bare-bones (Just Enough OS) OpenSUSE 11, to a full blown SUSE Enterprise Server.

Step 2: Add additional packages. Of course the full SUSE package list is available which includes everything you would normally find on the DVD. But, you can add any repository from the internet including your own custom ones either uploaded as an RPM or downloaded automatically from your own site.

But the goodness doesn’t end there… All of the respositories from the SUSE build service are also avaialble. You’ll be hard pressed to find a package that isn’t already available in Studio giving unprecidented flexability for building custom appliances.

Step 3: Next you configure some basic options such as Language, Timezone, Networking, and the default users and groups.

Step 4: Overylay files. If you need to add some files to your distro, just tar them up and they will be automatically un-tared in the directory specified.

Step 5: Create your applicance. You can pick one of 4 target formats. USB/Disk image, ISO, VMWare/VirtualBox, or XEN. Then click “Build”.

It typically takes less than 5 minutes to build the appliance and when you’re done you are presented with 2 options: Test Drive, or Download.

Test drive is really neat. Your appliance launches right in your browser window. You can watch it boot up, login, and test things out. The full desktop is there! Really cool! You can go back at any time and make changes.

Once you’re satisfied with your appliance click the download link and you’re done!

SUSE Studio is truly amazing.

I have only one small dissapointment; it only supports x86 archetectures and I had wanted to use it to build a PPC appliance that would run on the Sony PS3. I suspect they’ll add support for other CPUs in the future. Afterall, most small appliances don’t run full blown processors.

For reasons that I have not yet resolved, the wirless networking became unstable and as a result, the updates had to be aborted.

Unfortunately, a new kernel was part of the updates and when the laptop rebooted it was in a bad state. X windows wouldn’t start and critically, there were no network drivers for the new kernel. To make matters worse, OpenSUSE does not keep the old kernels in /boot (why is that?) so there was nothing to fall back on.

With nothing left to do, it was time to try rescue mode and in a few short steps I had the system fully working again. Here is what I did:

Step 1: boot to rescue mode (duh).

Step 2: mount your hard disk partitions under /mnt in the same layout they would be normally. For example:

# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt

# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

… etc.

Step 3: Next we need to make sure we have acess to all the important system resources.

# mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
# mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
# mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev

Step 4: We’re ready to chroot into our new environment.

# chroot /mnt

Step 5: We are now running on our system just as if we had booted to it and we can perform repairs. In my case all I needed to do was complete the updates:

# zypper up

I rebooted and everything was back to normal.

It didn’t take me long to get it working but google returns a lot of posts with not so good information so here is the documentation on my experience.

For example, in Yast, if you click “Installation Source”, Suse goes out and refreshes all the download sources, re-parses everything for absolutely no good reason. Why does Suse need to refresh the list of files just to display the installation sources? It makes no sense and is horribly frustrating especially if the reason you are examining the installation sources is to get rid of one that is slow or broken. Unfortunately I’ve never found a solution for this. The best you can do is make sure you have really fast download sources and be sure to set “Refresh” off on all sources except the update source.

Lately I’ve encountered another very annoying problem with Suse. There are several programs that decide its a good idea to burn 100% CPU for long periods. Chiefly, beagle (the desktop search tool) and zen (the software management).

Fortunately there is an easy solution to this. UNINSTALL THEM In my experience, beagle is completely useless and so is zen and its related tools so it’s best just to get rid of them.

The packages to delete are as follows:

• rug
• zmd
• opensuse-updater
• zen-updater
• beagle

You can safely remove these packages and any dependencies. You will no longer get the update icon in the task bar so periodically you should go into Yast and click “Online Update” to get updates manually. This tool does in 30 seconds what the rug/zmd/zen/updater crap can’t do in hours of CPU time.

Clearly there are some serious bugs in the SUSE package management so heres hoping they fix them soon!