42.3.20170714
Abstract
openSUSE Leap is a free and Linux-based operating system for your PC, Laptop or Server. You can surf the Web, manage your e-mails and photos, do office work, play videos or music and have a lot of fun!
The release notes are under constant development. To find out about the latest updates, see the online version at https://doc.opensuse.org/release-notes. The English release notes are updated whenever need arises. Translated language versions can temporarily be incomplete.
If you upgrade from an older version to this openSUSE Leap release, see previous release notes listed here: http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Release_Notes.
Information about the project is available at https://www.opensuse.org.
To report bugs against this release, use the openSUSE Bugzilla. For more information, see http://en.opensuse.org/Submitting_Bug_Reports.
This section contains installation-related notes. For detailed upgrade instructions, see the documentation at https://doc.opensuse.org/documentation/leap/startup/html/book.opensuse.startup/part.basics.html.
To avoid some big recommended packages from being installed, the pattern
for minimal installations uses another pattern that creates conflicts with
undesired packages. This pattern,
patterns-openSUSE-minimal_base-conflicts
, can be removed
after installation.
Note that the minimal installation has no firewall by default. If you need
one, install SuSEfirewall2
.
Prior to installing openSUSE on a system that boots using UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface), you are urgently advised to check for any firmware updates the hardware vendor recommends and, if available, to install such an update. A pre-installed Windows 8 is a strong indication that your system boots using UEFI.
Background: Some UEFI firmware has bugs that cause it to break if too much data gets written to the UEFI storage area. However, there is no clear data of how much is “too much”.
openSUSE minimizes the risk by not writing more than the bare minimum
required to boot the OS. The minimum means telling the UEFI firmware about
the location of the openSUSE boot loader. Upstream Linux kernel features
that use the UEFI storage area for storing boot and crash information
(pstore
) have been disabled by default. Nevertheless, it
is recommended to install any firmware updates the hardware vendor
recommends.
Together with the EFI/UEFI specification, a new style of partitioning arrived: GPT (GUID Partition Table). This new schema uses globally unique identifiers (128-bit values displayed in 32 hexadecimal digits) to identify devices and partition types.
Additionally, the UEFI specification also allows legacy MBR (MS-DOS) partitions. The Linux boot loaders (ELILO or GRUB 2) try to automatically generate a GUID for those legacy partitions, and write them to the firmware. Such a GUID can change frequently, causing a rewrite in the firmware. A rewrite consists of two different operations: Removing the old entry and creating a new entry that replaces the first one.
Modern firmware has a garbage collector that collects deleted entries and frees the memory reserved for old entries. A problem arises when faulty firmware does not collect and free those entries. This can result in a non-bootable system.
To work around this problem, convert the legacy MBR partition to GPT.
On openSUSE Leap 42.3, you need to uninstall the package
drm-kmp-default first, before you can manually install
Nvidia drivers using the .run
shell script archive:
zypper rm drm-kmp-default
If you install the RPMs provided by Nvidia, you will not be affected by this issue, because in that case the package drm-kmp-default is replaced during the driver installation automatically.
If you decide to uninstall Nvidia's driver later, make sure to reinstall the package drm-kmp-default.
For more information, see https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1044816.
This section lists notes related to upgrading the system. For detailed upgrade instructions, see the documentation at https://doc.opensuse.org/documentation/leap/startup/html/book.opensuse.startup/cha.update.osuse.html.
The following packages have been removed or replaced compared to openSUSE Leap 42.2:
ldapjdk: Fails to build on 42.3.
castor: Fails to build on 42.3.
fontinfo: Was never intended to be released as a stable package.
plasma5-mediacenter: Dropped by upstream after version 5.7.3.
perl-Mojolicious-Plugin-Bootstrap3: Deprecated by upstream, the functionality is replaced by perl-Mojolicious-Plugin-AssetPack.
qtsharp: Fails to build on 42.3.
rubygem-mysql: Replaced by rubygem-mysql2.
In openSUSE Leap 42.2, the X11 synaptics driver (package xf86-input-synaptics) was not installed by default (see Section 2.2.4, “Synaptics X Driver Can Degrade Touchpad Experience Under GNOME”). However, KDE Plasma only offers limited configuration options for the replacement, libinput.
Since openSUSE Leap 42.3, the xf86-input-synaptics package is installed together with the KDE Plasma desktop (recommended by plasma5-workspace).
In openSUSE Leap 42.3, the desktop search only indexes file names by default, not the contents of files.
File content indexing needs to be re-enabled manually, even if it was enabled before, as the previous default was not saved to the configuration. To do so, follow these steps:
Using the main menu or krunner, open the
.Click
.Activate the check box
.Click
.In openSUSE Leap 42.3, Shorewall was upgraded to last stable 5.1 release. When upgrading, shorewall and shorewall6 will warn admin that an upgrade of configurations files is required.
Documentation is available on http://shorewall.net/.
Procedure 1. Upgrading Shorewall
With root privileges in a console session, run:
root #
shorewall update -a /etc/shorewall
Adapt your configuration to the newer syntax in cases where the tool does not do that for you. This should normally only be required on specific, very complex configurations.
Verify and test the resulting configuration with:
root #
shorewall try /etc/shorewall
If everything works, reboot your computer or restart the service with:
root #
systemctl restart shorewall.service
The upgrade process for shorewall6 matches the
process for shorewall described in
Procedure 1, “Upgrading Shorewall”. However, you need to
replace all instances of the shorewall
with
shorewall6
.
The following packages have been removed or replaced compared to openSUSE Leap 42.1:
arista: Replaced by transmageddon.
cadabra: The source code no longer builds. The successor, Cadabra 2 is not stable yet.
dropbear: Removed because there are no relevant advantages over openssh.
emerillon: Replaced by gnome-maps.
gnome-system-log: Replaced by gnome-logs.
hawk: Replaced by hawk2.
ksnapshot: Replaced by spectacle.
labplot: Labplot has been replaced by its Qt5 version, called labplot-kf5. If you are updating from an openSUSE Leap 42.1 installation on which labplot is installed, you will receive the labplot-kf5 automatically.
nodejs: Renamed to nodejs4.
psi: Replaced by psi+.
python-moin: Replaced by moinmoin-wiki. Purely a rename, not a version upgrade - a virtually identical drop-in replacement.
ungifsicle: Replaced by gifsicle.
xchat: Replaced by hexchat.
/var/cache
contains a lot of very volatile data, such
as the Zypper cache with RPM packages in different versions for each
update. As a result of storing data that is mostly redundant but highly
volatile, the amount of disk space a snapshot occupies can increase very
fast.
To solve this, move /var/cache
to a separate
subvolume. On fresh installations of openSUSE Leap 42.3, this is
done automatically. To convert an existing root file system, perform the
following steps:
Find out the device name (for example,
/dev/sda2
or /dev/sda3
) of
the root file system:
df /
Identify the parent subvolume of all the other subvolumes. For
openSUSE 13.2 installations, this is a subvolume named
@
. To check if you have a @
subvolume, use:
btrfs subvolume list / | grep '@'
If the output of this command is empty, you do not have a subvolume
named @
. In that case, you may be able to proceed
with subvolume ID 5 which was used in older versions of openSUSE.
Now mount the requisite subvolume.
If you have a @
subvolume, mount that subvolume
to a temporary mount point:
mount <root_device> -o subvol=@ /mnt
If you do not have a @
subvolume, mount subvolume
ID 5 instead:
mount <root_device> -o subvolid=5 /mnt
/mnt/var/cache
can already exist and could be the
same directory as /var/cache
. To avoid data loss,
move it:
mv /mnt/var/cache /mnt/var/cache.old
Create a new subvolume:
btrfs subvol create /mnt/var/cache
If there is now a directory /var/cache.old
, move it
to the new location:
mv /var/cache.old/* /mnt/var/cache
If that is not the case, instead do:
mv /var/cache/* /mnt/var/cache/
Optionally, remove /mnt/var/cache.old
:
rm -rf /mnt/var/cache.old
Unmount the subvolume from the temporary mount point:
umount /mnt
Add an entry to /etc/fstab
for the new
/var/cache
subvolume. Use an existing subvolume as
a template to copy from. Make sure to leave the UUID untouched (this is
the root file system's UUID) and change the subvolume name and its mount
point consistently to /var/cache
.
Mount the new subvolume as specified in /etc/fstab
:
mount /var/cache
The integrated GPG agent of GNOME Keyring has been removed. Therefore, GNOME Keyring cannot be used to manage GPG keys anymore. You can still manage GPG keys on the command line using the gpg tool.
In openSUSE Leap 42.1, the Synaptics X driver (package xf86-input-synaptics) was installed by default but had a lower priority than the libinput driver (xf86-input-libinput).
With openSUSE Leap 42.3:
The Synaptics X driver is no longer installed by default.
If the Synaptics X driver is installed, it will take precedence for any touchpad devices.
The Synaptics X driver is no longer supported by GNOME. This means when the driver is installed, Synaptics touchpads can only be configured to the extent that a basic mouse can.
Unless you are using a Synaptics touchpad and have a large amount of custom configuration for the Synaptics driver, remove the package from your system:
sudo zypper rm xf86-input-synaptics
In openSUSE Leap 42.1, the default page size on AArch64 platforms was 64 kB. With openSUSE Leap 42.3, the page size has been changed to 4 kB. This renders old Swap and Btrfs file systems unusable.
If you are currently on openSUSE Leap 42.1 on AArch64, consider a fresh installation of openSUSE Leap 42.3 instead of upgrading.
The driver for Compaq/HP Smart Array (CCISS) controllers
(cciss.ko
) does not support certain controllers
anymore by default. This can lead to the root disk not being detected by
the openSUSE Leap 42.3 kernel.
On affected systems, the CCISS driver can be configured to revert to the
previous behavior and detect the controllers again. To do so, add the
kernel parameter cciss.cciss_allow_hpsa=0
.
This section lists general issues with openSUSE Leap 42.3 that do not match any other category.
KDE PIM 4.x is no longer supported by upstream KDE, but was kept in openSUSE Leap 42.2 together with KDE PIM 5 to avoid disrupting user workflows and allow for easier migration.
With openSUSE Leap 42.3, the KDE PIM 4.x stack got dropped and only the current upstream-supported KDE PIM 5 stack is included.
The versions of the KDE file managers Dolphin and Konqueror that are shipped with openSUSE Leap 42.3 cannot set “Extended Permission” bits (GID, “Sticky”). Additionally, closing the Dolphin permissions dialog by clicking clears existing extended permissions bits.
To avoid such issues, edit permissions with chmod (command line) only.
When using GNOME Shell together with a login manager other than GDM, such as SDDM or LightDM, the screen will not blank or lock. Additionally, switching users without logging out is not possible.
To be able to lock the screen from GNOME Shell, enable GDM as your login manager:
Make sure that the package gdm is installed.
Open YaST and from it, open
.Navigate to
+ + .
In the text box, specify gdm
. To save, click
.
Reboot.
With KDE Plasma 5.9, KDE re-introduced support for the global menu as known from earlier KDE desktop releases.
In openSUSE Leap 42.3, the application menu bar plasmoid is available as well.
Read the README
documents on the medium.
View a detailed changelog information about a particular package from its RPM:
rpm --changelog -qp FILENAME
.rpm
Replace FILENAME
with the name of the RPM.
Check the ChangeLog
file in the top level of the
medium for a chronological log of all changes made to the updated packages.
Find more information in the docu
directory on the
medium.
For additional or updated documentation, see https://doc.opensuse.org/.
For the latest product news, from openSUSE, visit https://www.opensuse.org.
Copyright © 2017 SUSE LLC
Thanks for using openSUSE.
The openSUSE Team.