Trying to return an unneeded and unwantet license of Windows

I just bought a Dell Inspiron Duo for my wife. Naturally I installed Linux to it: http://www.wonko.de/2011/08/opensuse-114-on-dell-inspiron-duo-1090.html

Now I try to return the License for Windows 7 Home Premium that came with the device.

First try 
Call Dell Support ( I am in Germany +49 69 9792 7200 )
I chose sales (out of tech support, shipping info and sales) to ask what to do: I explained that I just bought the Device and that I want to return the Windows license. She asked me where I bought it. I answered: In a Shop. Then She told me I should complain to the shop. I answered that this was not a complaint but that I wanted to return Windows. She hung up.

Second try
A mail via the Dell Support Website

Service-Tag-Nummer: 3LSQXN1
Systemtyp: Inspiron Inspiron duo
Lieferdatum: 06.01.2011
Land: Germany

Informationen zum Incident/Problem

Art des Incident: Operating System
Betriebssystemtyp: Windows 7
Betriebssystemversionen: Home Premium
Welches Problem tritt auf? Wann und wo tritt es auf?
Ich möchte meine Lizenz von Windows 7 Home Premium zurückgeben. Auf einem neu erworbenem Inspiron Duo (3LSQXN1) wurde Linux installiert. Windows wurde entfernt. (siehe meine anleitung unter http://www.wonko.de/2011/08/opensuse-114-on-dell-inspiron-duo-1090.html) Da ich sowohl beruflich als auch Privat viele Dell Notebooks einsetze (C620, D620,D820,E6500) wäre es schade wenn ich weiter gezungen wäre Windows zu erwerben, da ich im Suse Linux Consulting arbeite.
Falls Ihnen eine Fehlermeldung angezeigt wird, geben Sie bitte den Text der Meldung an.

Wurden kürzlich Änderungen an dem System vorgenommen?
OpenSuse 11.4 installiert
Welche Schritte haben Sie unternommen, um das Problem zu beheben oder um es zu isolieren?
Telefonsupport angerufen (Vertieb) dort wollte man sich der sache aber anscheinend nicht annehmen. (Es wurde aufgelegt)

I recieved an answer:

Schoenen guten Tag Herr Prause,
vielen Dank fuer Ihre E-Mail.

Ihr Rechner wurde nicht direkt bei Dell gekauft.
In diesem Fall wuerde ich Ihnen empfehlen, sich an den Verkaeufer zu wenden.

Eine Rueckgabe der Windows-Lizenz wird aber hoechstwahrscheinlich nicht moeglich sein.

Benutzen Sie bitte immer dieselbe E-Mail Adresse von der Sie uns Antworten und loeschen Sie nicht die vorherige Kommunikation sowie den Subjekt der Nachricht damit es nicht zu Verzoegerungen in der Antwortzeit unsererseits kommt.
Wir werden Sie nach 2 Tagen von CER_Services_Email1@Dell.com kontaktieren um sicherzugehen dass Sie diese E-Mail von uns bekommen haben.

Ich verbleibe mit freundlichen Gruessen und Ich wuensche Ihnen ein schoenes Wochenende

At least this guy was very friendly!

Now I will try the Shop. I find this rather odd since all the enclosed Documentation of the Netbook points towards Dell.

OpenSuse 11.4 on Dell Inspiron Duo 1090

My Wife is a teacher and wanted "one of these small PC thingies" to carry around all day.

So I bought her a Dell Inspiron Duo, because she also wants "one of those touch pad thingies" ;-)

Since all of our household PCs run OpenSuse the Netbook had to have it too. I was tempted to go for a more touch friendly Linux distro like Meego but decided against it. The differences would have been to confusing for the user. Btw. I will try to get a refund or at least store credit for the unused/unwanted Windows that came with the Netbook. I will Post here how that goes.

The Inspiron Duo has no DVD Drive so I installed using an external USB Drive (had no 4GB+ Stick). The installation went without fuzz ( Follow Instructions on: http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Live_USB_stick ):

• Download the install ISO
• Patch the iso for USB Booting:
  

  # zypper in syslinux
  # isohybrid openSUSE-11.4-DVD-x86_64.iso

• Copy the ISO to the drive
  

  # sudo zypper in ddrescue
  # sudo umount /dev/sdXY
  # dd_rescue openSUSE-11.4-KDE-LiveCD-x86_64.iso /dev/sdXY

• Boot from the USB drive
• Install

Pretty much everything worked out of the Box. Except for:

• The Touch screen -> Works after installing Drivers
• The Microphone (Speakers work) -> Works after setting Sound Module Options
• The KDE Networkmanager -> Works after upgrading KDE  (WLAN itself work out of the Box)

Touch Screen
For the Touch Screen I installed the Driver provided by the Manufacturer:

• Download 64Bit from http://home.eeti.com.tw/web20/eGalaxTouchDriver/linuxDriver.htm
• Extract the Tarball and run the setup sh
  

  #wget http://home.eeti.com.tw/web20/drivers/touch_driver/Linux/20110406/eGalaxTouch-3.05.5025-64b-k26.tar.gz
  #tar xvzf eGalaxTouch-3.05.5025-64b-k26.tar.gz 
  #sudo sh setup.sh

• Choose USB (3) when asked
• Then copy the created config file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
  

  sudo cp /usr/local/eGalaxTouch64/Rule/50-egalax.con /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/

• Reboot. Then run the eGalacTouch tool
  

  #sudo zypper in libpng12-0 (needed by eGalaxTouch)
  #eGalaxTouch

• Calibrate in eGalaxTouch -> Tool -> 4Pts Cal
  

Hints: If you read other Forums ( link link ) you might see a need for putting an usbhid.quirks option into grub config. This is apparently not necessary with OpenSuse 11.4 (+updates).

Microphone

Here YaST correctly identified snd-hda-intel as the right module. Unfortunately this is not enough.
After some trying around I figured out two things. I had a conflicting "options snd slots=snd-hda-intel..." line in a file in /etc/modprobe.d (all files are read not just .config ones) and the alsa-firmare was not installed.

zypper in alsa-firmware

My /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf after editing

alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
options snd_hda_intel model=ideapad

KDE Networkmanager

This is actually not related to the Inspiron DUO. But since the DUO has WLAN only I had to have it fixed.

The KDE Networkmanager that comes with OpenSuse 11.4 (+Updates) seems to broken for some Intel WLAN Cards. I have the same problem with Dell E6500. The Networkmanager will simply drop connections with WPA2 after a few Minutes/Seconds. For no good reason.

My fix: Upgrade to KDE 4.7 (see http://en.opensuse.org/KDE_repositories  )

sudo zypper ar --check --refresh http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Release:/47/openSUSE_11.4/ KDE47-Core
sudo zypper ar --check --refresh http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Extra/KDE_Release_47_openSUSE_11.4/ KDE47-Extra
sudo zypper dup

Goodies

I installed Chrome as the default Browser. It simply behaves better that Firefox on low Power Devices.
The chromeTouch Extension enables Touch Pad like scrolling.

I use Kvkbd as an on Screen (touch) keyboard

From the OpenSuse Education Projects ( http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Education ) I installed:

• Childsplay ( http://www.schoolsplay.org  / http://en.opensuse.org/Childsplay ) and
• tuxpaint ( http://tuxpaint.org )
• gcompris ( http://gcompris.net/-en- )

SLES 9 going out of General Support

Suse Linux Enterprise Server 9 ( SLES 9 ) was released on August 4th 2004.

And after 7 Years of General Support and two new Major Releases (SLES 10&11) is going "End of Life" on August 31st 2011.
See: http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2011-06/msg00014.html

This means you now have three options

• Migrate to SLES 11
  http://support.novell.com/inc/lifecycle/linux.html
• Buy Long Term Service Pack Support:
   http://www.novell.com/linux/service-pack-support.html
• Use Self support:
  http://support.novell.com/support_options.html?tab=1

SLES 9 is out of Support!
Please upgrade to SLES 11 ASAP!

SLES 10 SP4 Released

Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP4 ( SLES 10 SP4 ) was released on April 12th 2011.

See: http://www.novell.com/linux/releasenotes/
http://support.novell.com/inc/lifecycle/linux.html

This means that you have to upgrade your SLES 10 SP3 installations to SP4 within 6 Months of the release to continue receive Support for SLES 10. As an alternative you can purchase Long Term Service Pack Support: http://www.novell.com/linux/service-pack-support.html

SLES 10 SP3 is out of Support!
Please update to SLES 10 SP4 ASAP!

Make Thunderbird 3 in OpenSuse 11.3/KDE open Chrome

[Update for Thunderbird 8 in OpenSUSE 12.1/KDE below]
Thunderbird uses gconf even when running in KDE.

For some reason when you tell Chrome to be your default Browser it misses out configuring gconf.

Fire up a shell and type:

gconftool-2 -g /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command

You will see something like:

/usr/bin/firefox "%s"

To change this over to chrome type:

gconftool-2 --type string -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command "google-chrome %s"

Restart Thunderbird. And now http(s) links should open in Chrome.

[Update]

TB > 4.x uses the xdg settings to determine the right thing to do.
Unfortunately on my Opensuse 12.1/KDE Box these seem not to be set by google-chrome.

I found the Solution here.

Aparently Google Chrome only sets the default browser for the "text/htm" Mime Type. Links seem to be clasefied "x-scheme-handler/http".

To fix this add the following line line to ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list

x-scheme-handler/http=google-chrome.desktop

Oracle Express 10g (Oracle XE) on Suse Linux Enterprise 11 (SLES 11)

Sometimes things are simple.

I was having troubles to install Oracle XE on a SLES 11 Box.
The Lister would start. But not the Web Interface (http://localhost:8080/apex)

Since my Oracle knowledge is limited I was stuck. Only this Post gave me a hint where to look

oracle@ivml2114:~/app/oracle/product/10.2.0>./server/bin/oracle_env.sh                                                                                     
oracle@ivml2114:~/app/oracle/product/10.2.0> lsnrctl start                                                                                                  

LSNRCTL for Linux: Version 10.2.0.1.0 - Production on 23-AUG-2010 11:29:42

Copyright (c) 1991, 2005, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

TNS-01106: Listener using listener name LISTENER has already been started
oracle@ivml2114:~/app/oracle/product/10.2.0> sqlplus /nolog              

SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.1.0 - Production on Mon Aug 23 11:30:00 2010

Copyright (c) 1982, 2005, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

SQL> connect sys/ as sysdba
oracleXE: error while loading shared libraries: libaio.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
ERROR:                                                                                                                
ORA-12547: TNS:lost contact                                                                                          

Bingo! This is a 64 Bit System. Oracle Xe is 32 Bit. Argh. I did check for the dependencie mentioned in the Oracle docu. But of course missed this.

#zypper in libaio-32bit

To be sure I then re-installed Oracle XE. And you know what? It Works!

Using ifup/down with local Lan and Wireless

I have a Notebook sitting in the living room. Its mostly for reading Mails/Blogs, checking the Weather. Occasionally I hook it up to the TV to watch Movies. Here's where the trouble starts: To do that I connect the Notebook to a Physical Network for Bandwidth reasons. The Movies sit on a NAS.
I configured the Notebook to be on IfUp/-Down in contrast to using Networkmanager since It will only connect to one pre-configured Wireles LAN. This way I am able to remotely connect to the Notebook even though nobody is logged in. The NM will only connect on login. 

My FritzBox hands out IP-Addresses from the same Subnet to all Clients on WLAN and LAN. This causes troubles when the Notebook is connected to the Physical LAN. The WLAN and LAN interface compete to be the default gateway. After plugging in the routing gets mixed up and I loose connection.

The solution is easy: Tell ifplugd to switch off the other Card on Ifup.

In Yast I configured the Devices to be started on cable connect. This changes the /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-eth0 and ifcfg-wlan0 files to :

... 
 STARTMODE='ifplugd'
...

Then I changed the Script /etc/ifplugd/ifplugd.action. The script is called whenever a change in connection is detected by ifplugd. Its called with the Device (et0/wlan0) as $1 and the command (up/down) as $2. My change simply Downs the respective "other" Interface:

...
[ "$1" = eth0 ] OTHER = wlan0                                                   
[ "$1" = wlan0 ] OTHER = eth0                                                   
                                                                                
[ "$2" = "up" ] && exec /sbin/ifup $1 -o ifplugd && exec /sbin/ifdown $OTHER    
[ "$2" = "down" ] && exec /sbin/ifdown $1 -o ifplugd && exec /sbin/ifup $OTHER  
...

I only tested this on OpenSuse 11.3 but I think it will work with most other Distros that have ifplugd,