First Visit – The Drop

For a single-family building (e.g. my house), Verizon splits the installation into two days.   The “drop” is an optical fiber cable running from the nearest utility pole or box to an attachment point on your house.  Unfortunately, you cannot schedule the date of the drop installation (aerial at least, I’m not sure about underground).   In areas with underground utilities, the fiber-optic cable may have to be trenched in, which is why the drop gets a day all its own in the schedule. Our area uses aerial drops and the fiber was installed in less than half an hour.

If (like I was) you are imagining a guy reeling a length of fiberoptic cable out of a box just like Ethernet cable, not so.  Because of the difficulty in terminating optical fiber, drops come in fixed lengths with connectors affixed to both ends. When the lineman comes out, he/she assumes that the ONT will be bolted to the exterior wall directly below the point where the fiber attaches to the house. If you want the ONT some distance away, you have to get the lineman to install a longer cable.

The sales representative had added a note to my order requesting the ONT to be installed in the basement.  This information was not passed on to the lineman. Fortunately I was home when he showed up and he readily agreed to “super-size” the drop and paced off the distance to where I wanted the ONT.

Preparation

The Verizon FiOS web site, the technician during the ordering phone call, and Internet forums all had differing opinions on if/how one could use Ethernet cable to connect the ONT to the Internet router. But everyone agreed that “if you want an Ethernet connection to your router, you must run Cat 5e cable ahead of time”, so I did just that and hoped for the best.

I also screwed a 24″ by 12″ plywood ONT mounting panel to studs in the basement. A grounded outlet was just within 10 feet of the panel.

Second Visit – Installation Day

Verizon installer “Bob” arrived toward the middle of the 4-hour appointment window, cheerful and ready to install FiOS. I led him to the basement and proudly unveiled the plywood mounting panel with my newly run Cat 5e cable hanging nearby.

After verifying that a long fiberoptic cable had been run from the pole and that a grounded outlet was nearby, Bob signed up for the basement ONT location.  He attached the ONT and power supply, coiling the excess  cable in a storage bin mounted behind the ONT.  In the photo below, the FiOS fiberoptic cable is the one with the red tag attached.

Next, Bob screwed a signalling LED onto the fiberoptic cable and then drove off to the other end of the cable to find and connect it to the Verizon FiOS infrastructure. Upon return, he connected a piece of measuring equipment in place of the LED and pronounced the signal level to be excellent.

ONT and Power Supply Mounting Panel

Motorola ONT Coaxial, Ethernet, and POTS Connections

If I had seen the FiOS ONT and power supply beforehand, I would have planned a horizontal panel, with the ONT to the left and power supply to the right. This would have made for neater wire runs with fewer crossovers.

At this point, the ONT is connected to Verizon and is online. Now the premises wiring (TV, phone, and Internet) must be connected. When I asked Bob to use my Cat 5e cable to connect to the router, he declared this to be impossible. “Older routers could be connected with both Cat 5e and coaxial cable, but the newer ones use only coax. Here, take a look for yourself,” he said, handing me the Actiontec router.

Well, the Actiontec router has an Ethernet WAN port and the ONT has an Ethernet port pointed to by a big, green, “Step 2″ arrow (see Connections photo). But I still didn’t know what the STB needed to connect with on the LAN, and faced with Bob’s conviction that Cat 5e couldn’t be used, I relented. Bob said he would run new coaxial cable to the same destination as my Ethernet cable, so I pointed to the far corner of the basement crawl space and off he went.

Bob did a professional job routing the RG-06 cable through the crawl space to the router and connecting to the existing TV cable. I ended up with properly supported cable running parallel or perpendicular to the floor joists, as opposed to the diagonal maze left by the cable TV installer last time around. By offering to help with a couple runs, I ended up with all new coaxial cable in the basement, leaving only one short existing stub to the set-top box (STB).

The Motorola STB and Actiontec MI424WR Internet router are standard fare so I’ll skip any photos of them.

With everything wired up, Bob now needed access to a PC to activate the STB for the TV and “complete the installation” of our FiOS Internet. Planning for this, I had rebooted one of my Linux workstations back into Windows XP. Bob ran an application off of a USB thumb drive that uploaded some measurements of the FiOS signal quality, then set a username and password for the router.

Verizon has added their own GUI for the Actiontec router: suffice to say it’s a heavy-handed, “if it’s more inconvenient, it must be more secure” affront to customers, while of course providing an un-blockable back-door for Verizon to log in remotely any time they please.

I logged into the router and viewed the network. The set-top box indeed appeared as a DHCP client, so the stories are true: Verizon FiOS STBs must be able to view the Actiontec router on their LAN segment in order to request an IP address.

Summary

Verizon FiOS performs as advertised, slightly exceeding both download and upload bit rates on DSLReports speed tests. But I haven’t yet downloaded a Linux distribution torrent to confirm sustained rates.

I’m very glad to have the FiOS ONT inside the house. Only the optical fiber passes through the wall. If the ONT had ended up outdoors, up to 5 wires would be drilled through the wall, and neighbors would have to look at my ugly ONT. If you have an attached garage, that’s the perfect place for your ONT.

If you sign up for FiOS Internet plus TV (with a set-top box), the Internet router must be connected to the ooaxial cabling in the house. This is true even if the router-to-ONT WAN connection is Cat 5e. This LAN topology with MoCA and Ethernet segments and STBs is unusual. I haven’t seen anything like this since the days of 10Base-2 Ethernet (anyone remember thinnet?).

Glossary:

• ONT – optical network terminal. A “very small” (not!) box that is bolted onto your wall. Verizon’s fiber-optic cable goes in (terminates) and your premises wiring (phone, TV, Internet) comes out.
• STB – set-top box. Decoder that sits on your TV. Unlike cable TV broadband Internet, FiOS STBs also connect to your LAN as DHCP clients.
• MoCA - the Multimedia over Coax Alliance. Used as an adjective (as in a “MoCA router”) it means using cable TV wire as LAN cabling instead of normal twisted-pair (i.e. Cat 5e) cable.  Both Verizon-supplied Actiontec MI424WR and Westell 9100EM routers are MoCA and Ethernet capable.
• SOHO - small office/home office. My FiOS installation supports a home office with five computers and several networked peripherals. This installation guide is written with the SOHO user in mind.

Verizon FiOS Installation Guide

Step 1 – Ordering:

Placing your FiOS order will of course cover choice of services, what channels are included, pricing, and special offers. Here are additional items to consider beyond the “default” ordering session:

• ONT Location – learn whether you’re getting an aerial or underground fiber-optic cable drop. It’s one or the other — I haven’t heard of anyone who had a choice. For aerial drops, the default ONT location is adjacent to your electrical utility feed. If you want your ONT elsewhere (mine is in the basement), have this noted on the order configuration, even though this is only a “suggestion” to Verizon and not a commitment.
• Appointment Dates – FiOS installation is done in two steps: the drop and the interior equipment and cabling. The interior installation date is the one that is used to qualify the limited time offers (e.g. “Free DVR. Must order by 1 Jan, install by 30 March”). If the order-by date is at hand but you need time to prepare your house, push out the installation date.
• Activate Additional TV Coax Lines – my service representative suggested activating all existing cable runs in the house even though we had only one television. Verizon will activate up to six during initial FiOS installation, if you specify this number when placing the order.  When a TV is added in the future, Verizon just sends out an STB which is connected to an activated coaxial cable (no installation fee).
• Ethernet Cable from ONT to Internet Router (non-TV installations only) – all FiOS Internet installations come with a Verizon-proprietary MoCA Internet router which they connect to the ONT using RG-06 (TV) coaxial cable. If you’ve also signed up for FiOS TV, this is the only installation method possible. But non-TV, non-apartment subscribers can opt for Ethernet cabling between ONT and router. This makes it possible to switch to your own router in the future. Have this request added to the order configuration (again, this is only a suggestion to Verizon).
• Sign-up Offer – save whatever “special offer” literature you signed up with. You’ll need it to compare against your first and second bills to help determine if the proper pricing has been applied.

Step 2 – Preparation and Fiber-optic Drop:

If you’ve decided on one or more of the non-standard items listed in step 1, here are the actions you must take between placing the order and your installation date:

• Non-standard ONT Location – if you want your FiOS ONT in a specific location. provide a sturdy 24″ x 12″ mounting surface (wood or drywall) for the ONT and its power supply (12″ x 18″ for the ONT and 12″ x 12″ for the power supply, if not co-located). Both the ONT and power supply are supposed to be within 10 feet of a grounded outlet. The power supply’s cord is only 10 feet long, so this is a hard limit.
• Fiber-optic Drop – non-standard ONT locations are often far away from the point on the house where the fiber-optic drop is attached. If so, you must get a longer fiber-optic cable installed. If the equipment installer comes out and finds that the cable is too short to reach your planned ONT location, you’re in trouble. And you can’t schedule aerial drop installs — the guy just shows up. You either have to catch him, or try leaving notes posted where the phone and cable TV wires currently attach to your house.
• Internet Router Location – as part of the standard new FiOS installation package, Verizon will run coaxial cable from the ONT to any router location you desire. The cable pathway is the installer’s choice (negotiable) and does not include snaking cable between walls. If you’re very particular about cable runs, consider running RG-06 cable yourself or offering to pay the installer to meet your requirements.
• Cat 5e Cable Installation - FiOS installation includes running coaxial cable from the ONT to your chosen router location. If you prefer Ethernet cable (for cosmetic reasons or because you plan to substitute your own router for Verizon’s) you must install Cat 5e cable yourself.
• Sacrificial PC - the installer wants access to a Windows PC to activate your installation, and to install a couple of unconfigurable, undocumented, inscrutable software applications. Those who are particular about what gets installed on your PCs, consider yourselves warned. I rebooted one of my Linux machines back into its Windows XP partition on installation day.

Step 3 – Installation, the Big Day:

All equipment and interior cabling will be installed and made operational today. If all goes well, you’ll be surfing the Internet at blazing-fast speeds before the day is out. Once again, the following items relate to customizing your FiOS installation beyond a standard Verizon FiOS installation:

• Patience- your installer will arrive expecting a standard installation; special requests written down during the ordering process are rarely passed on to the installer. So explain your mounting and cabling requests anew and don’t blame him/her for not being aware of them.
• Diplomacy - when ordering, you were the customer and Verizon was the seller. Now the situation is reversed: you may have to “sell” your installer on accommodating your non-standard requests. Verizon FiOS nstallers often are contractors and not Verizon employees. Contractors are paid by the install, not by the hour, and thus may be less-than-thrilled with time consuming special requests. Find out your installer’s situation, pick and choose your battles, and consider appropriate motivational options.
• Cat 5e from ONT to Router – if you’ve run Cat 5e cable, and if you’re not getting FiOS TV, and if the ONT and router have Ethernet ports, and if the installer knows the procedure, he/she can use your cable instead of running new coax. If you’re not so lucky, you’ll need to do this later yourself.
• Router Username and Password – Verizon forces these to be set during installation and you cannot leave this step until later. Ask to set them yourself or write them down. Either way, make certain you can successfully log in before the installer leaves.
• Complete the Installation – this is one of those software applications I mentioned earlier. It enables email accounts and sets up your MyVerizon area at verizon.net. Your installer will either walk you through this, or will leave your PC with a “Resume Verizon FiOS Installation” icon on your desktop.  It will also set the router username and password if this wasn’t done by the installer.
• User Guides and Manuals - many customers aren’t interested in “reading the manual”, so installers often overlook them. I found 3 manuals and 1 CD going through the boxes in my recycling bin. I was lucky, since some installers leave the boxes in the back of their trucks. If you want yours, tell the installer you want every scrap of paper from every box.

Step 4 – Aftermath:

Congratuations, your new FiOS installation is complete! In between hours of watching TV and surfing the Internet, you can log on to your new Verizon FiOS router and see the following devices on your local LAN:

• 192.168.1.1 – the Verizon FiOS Actiontec router.
• 192.168.1.2 – your computer.
• 192.168.1.100 – your FiOS set-top box (FiOS TV subscribers only).
• Additional PCs appear at addresses 3-n, additional STBs at 101-n.

Export and save the router configuration, then begin your network configuration (instructions in a future post).

My FiOS Installation and Customization

Read my own saga and see how well I followed my own advice. The following posts also include instructions for customizing the LAN configuration for Actiontec routers:

• My FiOS Installation.
• The Actiontec MI424WR-GEN2 Version E Router (to-be-posted).
• Change the IP address space of a FiOS LAN with STBs from 192.168.1.1 (to-be-posted).

Alternating tri-boot is what I call my preferred configuration for a work environment where down time or restore time due to a failed OS upgrade is costly schedule-wise.  Alternating tri-boot hosts three operating systems on a workstation: the as-delivered Windows XP partition, and two Linux distributions which both mount the same /home partition.

Description:

During normal use, two Linux distributions (e.g. openSUSE 11.0 and 10.2) and the original Microsoft OS are always bootable.  An extended partition containing four logical partitions is created. In the following diagram, the extended partition is aqua and the current Linux boot partition is the rightmost ext3 partition (labeled “root” and containing openSUSE 11.0):

Figure 1. Alternating Tri-boot Disk Partitions

When openSUSE 11.0 is booted, it mounts the common /home and /swap partitions and also mounts the 10.2 partition under /oldOS.  Moreover, the openSUSE 10.2 partition remains bootable since it was untouched during the installation of 11.0.  If booted as root, it would mount the same /home and swap partitions.  Thus all user data is available through normal login under either Linux OS.

Figure 2. Installation Progression for Successive Linux Versions

Figure 2 shows how the contents of the partitions change as the newest Linux OS progresses from openSUSE 10.2 to 11.0 and finally 11.2.  The arrows show the new installations alternating between partitions sda6 and sda7, highlighting the point that current release is not disturbed when the next one is installed.  The availability of each release (10.2, 11.0 and 11.2) always spans two full release cycles.

Thus there are always three bootable OSes and new Linux installations alternate between the two Linux OS partitions — “alternating tri-boot”.

Benefits:

• Never a “point of no return” during upgrades.  At any time during the installation of a new Linux distribution, you can stop and reboot into the most recent working configuration.
• Mounting the previous distribution’s root partition under /oldOS solves  “lost configuration file” anxiety.  Ever been working on your new OS distribution for a few weeks, then fire up a seldom used application only to find out you forgot to copy/save its configuration file?  With the alternating OS partitions, that missing file is available somewhere under /oldOS.  It can be copied or diffed without having to restore from a tar file or other backup.
• New hardware can be installed and debugged using the Windows utilities provided by the vendor.  Problems can be localized to either the hardware or the Linux driver.  No more calling the 800 number only to hear, “Load Windows and call me back.”
• Present the machine as a Windows PC for on-site support and warranty issues.  For service calls, set the default OS back to Windows XP in the NT loader and let the technician have at it.
• Alternating tri-boot retains the NT bootloader.  This is an integral part of avoiding point-of-no-return situations, since the original bootloader and the disk’s MBR are never overwritten or disabled during Linux installations.

Caveats:

• In the midst of a new OS installation there is of course only one functional Linux partition.  During this window of vulnerability, you can’t fall back to booting the /oldOS partition if the current OS is damaged.  So don’t meddle with the configuration of the current OS while installing the new one.
• Don’t let the /home partition be reformatted! Linux installer programs (e.g. YaST for openSUSE) usually scan the disks and partition tables and suggest an installation scenario.  Often they propose reformatting all of the Linux partitions.  This will wipe out the /home directories and all of your user data.  Only one partition (root) should be reformatted.

Coming soon – step-by-step instructions…

I finally found this post which presented a solution:

“Turn off MultiViews. It seems when MultiViews is enabled there is confusion between MultiViews and the RewriteRules. So if you go to /user there will be no problem, MultiViews will translate it to /user.php. However when you go to /user/blah/login/blah or one of the other more complex clean URLs it gets confused.”

Adding “Options -Multiviews” to my .htaccess file fixed the problem. Not sure why this only happens on my GoDaddy account and not locally or at our other hosting accounts. Is this the one and only error that results from Multiviews and ModRewrite colliding, or are there others? If so, maybe I’ll shut off Multiviews on all my web sites until I need to add multiple language support.

• Configuration area (config.inc.php file) ends up in /srv/www/htdocs/phpMyAdmin along with the rest of the installation.
• Decided to use “cookie based authentication”; don’t think I need to remember the password.
• The advanced features were turned on in config.sample.inc.php, but the YaST installer doesn’t load the schema required for this into the mySQL database (maybe it’s not possible unless done during mySQL installation). This resulted in endless error messages of “Table ‘phpmyadmin.pma_bookmark’ doesn’t exist”.
• Learned that I needed to run create_tables.sql, which was not included in the openSUSE package. I downloaded it from the phpMyAdmin site, created user “pma”, defined corresponding controluser and controlpass entries in the config file. create_tables finally ran successfully and the bookmarks error messages went away.
• Stopped annoying half-hour auto-logout with: $cfg['LoginCookieValidity'] = 3600 * 8;

With ZENworks finally replaced with zypper on my system, package maintenance is fun once again, so I decided to try installing the proprietary ATI drivers. From among all of the different ways described on the web, I’ve selected “The Easy Way” from the openSUSE ATI documentation, which uses rpm packages supplied & maintained by ATI (AMD).

Pre-installation Status:

1. glxgears - Mesa GLX Indirect renderer, runs about 90 FPS.
2. Konqueror sysinfo: - Model: Radeon XPRESS 200 5954 (PCIE), Driver: radeon (No 3D Support).
3. /usr/lib{,64}/libGL.so.1.2 - made “before” copies, since some installation instructions call for hiding them after installation. I want to be able to undo any hand edits to return to the standard linux driver if necessary.
4. /etc/X11/xorg.conf - made a copy of the current file.

ATI Driver Installation Steps:

Based on the openSUSE ATI documentation, The Easy Way, openSUSE 10.3 10.2 10.1:

1. zypper service-add http://www2.ati.com/suse/10.2 ATI – adds a YUM catalog containing the ATI proprietary drivers in rpm package format, enabling installation via YaST. I browsed here first, received a “no file found” message, and thought that the ati.com address had been retired by AMD. Fortunately, the instructions noted that the “above URLs are not browseable with a web browser, only by a YUM / REPO-MD capable packager manager”.
2. Step 2 of the openSUSE instructions list a zypper command to install 2 ATI packages, but I wanted to see what was available and check dependencies before installing so I decided to use the YaST installer to carry out this step.
3. Started YaST/Software Management, filtered for the new ATI catalog, and saw four packages: x11-video-fglrxG01 and 3 different versions of ati-fglrxG01-kmp (for bigsmp, debug, and default kernels). Choose the fglrx package that matches your kernel as shown by the uname command (default in my case). The dependency check was ok, so I clicked Accept. The X11 video driver package is 19MB, the kernel driver only 500KB.
4. After the package installation was complete, I started YaST Software Management again to inspect the file lists of the new packages. The kernel module was installed into /lib/modules/2.6.18.8-0.8-default whereas my kernel is 2.6.18.8-0.9. The video driver package installs drivers into X11R6/lib{,64} and did not overwrite the original drivers.
5. sax -r – per the instructions. I’ve never run this command before (except when installing the OS) and it worried me. The screen locks up, then it appears to kill the X server, but it reappears. Now I’ve got the SaX2 GUI and the Monitor tab’s Activate 3D acceleration option is active. After verifying that 1600×1200 resolution was set, I clicked OK without changing anything. Note: found the output from this command in /var/log/SaX.log.
6. A box with a “Test” option appeared, I tested and the display was ok. Then Save, and an announcement that the changes will take effect when the graphics system is restarted. This should allow me to check xorg.conf. But no, the display started behaving badly, so I logged out and back in per the instructions.
7. After completion, the accelerated 3D worked, but I’m now getting constant kernel errors:
   [fglrx:firegl_free_mutex] *ERROR* mutex id 0x.. not found in mutex list
   kernel: warning: many lost ticks.
   kernel: time source seems to be instable or some driver is hogging interupts
   
8. Display didn’t look correct (see below) so I added a Modeline back in from the old xorg.conf file. This proved fatal to the X server. I managed to fix it by rebooting from an old SUSE 10.0 partition, otherwise it would have been time to rescue boot from DVD and attempt repairs. A vivid reminder of why I avoid X11 configuration whenever possible.
9. The CRT Monitor parameters in xorg.conf switched from Modelines to Calculated and the display was being driven differently. There is now vertical compression at the top and bottom of the screen (as if the vertical scan rate was not constant).  Can not completely compensate with the monitor’s adjustments.
10. glxgears - ATI Radeon Xpress Series renderer, now runs 1300 FPS.
11. None of the OpenGL screensavers work; I think they are the source of most of the kernel mutex errors.

Conclusions:

• YaST’s SaX2 is still an adventure and not up to the quality level of most other parts of YaST. There is little documentation (the openSUSE.org page is still a stub), and it runs without feedback, leaving me to wonder what choices are being made and where things are written. I would need to learn a lot of gory details about X11 configuration before I’d feel comfortable with SaX2 and the ATI drivers (or ATI/openSUSE would need to fix the frequent kernel errors).
• Next release, I’ll install the 3D drivers first thing after installing the OS, then review the results and kernel errors. If I don’t like what I see, I can reload the OS, which is the only way I’ll feel confident that I’ve cleaned everything out.
• Once I start using an OS release for production work, I’ll leave the graphics drivers unchanged for the duration. Updating midstream like I’ve done here is too risky (since I don’t need 3D for my projects).

I configured /etc/smartd.conf after reading the smartd.conf and smartctl man pages, the smartd log entries in the messages file, and comments within the file itself. Current setup:

  /dev/sda -d sat \
  -a -o off -S on \
  -s (O/../.././07|S/../.[27]/./08|L/.[02468]/15/./08) \
  -m root@localhost -M test

Notes on the configuration parameters:

1. -d sat - lots of testing to determine this should be sat (SCSI to ATA Translation) and not ata. The various man pages are vague, with one saying “follow the hints appearing in the log file.” Well, the hint in my log file said “use -d ata or -d sat” (sigh). Both seemed to work, so I began with sat since the libata library is present. Subsequent tests of ata produced command failure messages in the log, thus sat is correct.
2. -a - turn on the default recommended set of monitoring functions.
3. -S on - “S” is variously described as “turning on SMART” or “turning on Attribute Autosave”. I believe this is a modal parameter within the disk drive itself, and starting smartd turns this on by default. The manual recommends adding to the configuration to ensure it doesn’t get shut off. It echoes “enabled SMART Attribute Autosave” to messages, reassuring me that SMART is running.
4. -o off – “o” controls “SMART Automatic Offline Testing” (data collection really, not testing). The man page says this command is obsolete and that the collection intervals are chosen by the disk manufacturer. The “O” offline test (discussed next) causes the same data to be collected.
5. -s REGEXP – schedule various off-line tests My schedule: O (offline immediate), every day, 7am; S (Short), every 5 days, 8am; L (Long) – 15th of alternate months. I haven’t discovered what the differences are between the short and long tests (for my disk the short test takes 2 minutes vs. 98 minutes for the long test).
6. -m, -M - email address for important messages. “-M test” sends an email on startup to confirm everything is working.
7. -i N – (command line only, not conf file) set the interval for polling the disk. Seems like this shoud be controllable from the conf file, but since it isn’t I’m staying with the default of 30 minutes.

Notes:

On Linux, “smartctl -c” always showed a failure in the offline data collection status:

(0×05) Offline data collection activity was aborted by an interrupting command from host.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.

Examining the messages file shows auto-collection being enabled and the scheduled offline collection being started. Everything seems normal, but auto-collection becomes disabled at some point. On two WindowsXP PCs, data collection activity completes normally and Offline Collection is enabled. I don’t know how auto-collection was enabled on these two machines; perhaps HDD Health did it.

Is the Linux collection failure connected with auto-collection becoming disabled? First attempt at solution: switched from “-o on” to off after realizing that my scheduled testing ran the same test. Changed short test schedule to one per week in case it was causing the interruption. The problem has gone away and smartctl now reports “data collection activity was completed without error”.

References:

• Wikipedia – best description of the SMART attributes that I found (other than the spec itself which is exhausting). The external link “Out SMART your hard drive” helped explain why the raw data was different between my Maxtor and Seagate hard drives.
• smartmontools – home page for the SMART tools. They are installed by default in openSUSE Linux, and available for download for Windows XP.
• HDD Health – a graphical user interface that presents current SMART information and failure alerts for Windows PCs. Still need smartmontools to trigger the offline tests.

This problem plus the announcement of openSUSE 11.0 Alpha caused me to reconsider my upgrade plans. I am happy with 10.2 but was planning to upgrade to 10.3 solely to eliminate the nightly 1.5 hour zmd update runs (which I’ve complained about at length in a previous post).

Since I am now going to have to poke around with updating anyway, I decided to look once more for instructions on how to disable the ZENworks ZEN management daemon (zmd). If I succeed in turning off zmd, I may skip the 10.3 release entirely and go directly from 10.2 to 11.0.

How to Disable ZMD:

I found this openSUSE-Community.org article which provides simple instructions for disabling and removing zmd. Using it as a guide, I performed the following steps:

1. rczmd stop – this stopped zmd. Hallelujah! I’ve never known how to do this before now.
2. Start the YaST, Software, Installation Source GUI.
3. Add ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/update/10.2 as a new catalog.
4. Disable (status = Off, update = Off) the old (utah.edu) mirror catalog. This catalog can be removed once the ftp catalog is working.
5. Uncheck the “Synchronize with ZENworks” check box.
6. Click Finish.
7. The catalog information was successfully downloaded from ftp.suse.com, new updates appeared in the updater applet, and were successfully applied. Everything seems to be working.
8. I restarted the Installation Source GUI and was dismayed to see the “Synchronize with ZENworks” box still checked. Don’t know if it is still turned on, or if the GUI is just urging me to turn it back on.
9. Leaving zmd turned off but still installed, I let the system run for a few days until I verified that newly released updates from openSUSE were reported in the updater applet.
10. Once verified, I removed the zmd related packages as described in the article:
    rpm -e zmd libzypp-zmd-backend sqlite-zmd rug zen-updater
11. Restarted the Installation Source GUI: the “Synchronize with ZENworks” box is now grayed out.
12. Rebooted; start-up works fine without ZENworks zmd.

Updater Applet:

If you are running KDE, you may need to perform the following step:

1. Switch the panel updater applet (controlled  by /etc/sysconfig/sw_management) from zlm (the zen-updater update manager) to opensuse.

I had already done this manually during my previous battles with zmd, but I have some recollection that it will happen automatically if the zen-updater application isn’t found. For Gnome, I don’t know what applet (if any) will appear in the panel.

Win XP ran fine after all of the updates, but when I rebooted into openSUSE 10.2, it was unable to connect to the LAN. I found the following alarming entries in /var/log/messages:

  kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
  kernel: eth0: Transmit timeout, status 0d 0000 c07f media 10.
  kernel: eth0: Tx queue start entry 4  dirty entry 0.
  kernel: eth0:  Tx descriptor 0 is 0008224e. (queue head)
  kernel: eth0:  Tx descriptor 1 is 0008224e.
  kernel: eth0:  Tx descriptor 2 is 0008224e.
  kernel: eth0:  Tx descriptor 3 is 0008024e.

Assuming that on-the-fly loading of the new driver by Windows XP plus a warm reboot had put the LAN chip in an undefined state, I did a full power-off reboot. No help. Perhaps my Linux configuration had been damaged coincidentally. To check, I rebooted a third time into an old, still functional SUSE 10.0 partition. It now failed with the same NETDEV errors. Anxiously, I rebooted into Windows XP, which still worked fine.

I was now faced with convincing evidence that a driver running under Windows XP was leaving the LAN interface firmware or hardware in a condition that could not be (or was not) properly re-initialized by Linux — something I would have dismissed as impossible had someone asked me prior to today.

Wanting my Linux back up as soon as possible, I ran Windows XP System Restore and rolled back out of the driver update. Holding my breath, I rebooted into openSUSE and found myself back on the LAN. Here are the before and after messages sections edited for easy comparison: messages-watchdog.txt and messages-normal.txt.

So Windows XP System Restore (which has saved my butt more than once) is the hero of this incident, with the problem likely in the Linux driver or the Realtek chip itself. I found 30K web hits on the error message, with this thread being the best match. No authoritative solution has appeared even though Linux users have been experiencing this problem consistently since 2005. Probably because debugging it would be a tedious, thankless task.

svn copy http://localhost/svn/ll/trunk/php http://localhost/svn/ll/branches/phpMVC

The branch development was adopted, thus requiring merging the code back into the trunk. Overall, using a branch on just the subdirectory I was working on made the development and merging easier. Commits by others could be retrieved by an update without needing a merge, minimizing disruptions during coding.

I screwed up the merge as follows:

• svn merge -r 11:15 http:../branches/phpMVC – on the basis of a stop-on-copy command that started at 15 and ended at 11.  But other files in the branch had been modified up to revision 20.  So I will use the form svn merge -r 11:HEAD from now on.
• I kept issuing the svn merge and svn switch  commands in the root directory instead of the php subdirectory.  These missteps were reported by SVN and I recovered, but I did scare myself a few times.

Also, I modified a file in a css subdirectory which I could not commit to the branch because it was not within the scope of the branch. Next time I will create the branch on the entire project and then svn switch only the subdirectory I’m working on. This leaves the option of switching other subdirectories if the work expands.