Installing Virtualbox Guest Additions on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 and 15

 This article is not a complete and detailed how to, but will covered the subtlety of installing and using the Virtualbox Guest Additions (or Virtualbox Tools) on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SPX and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SPX.

Requirement:

Packages : gcc make kernel-default-devel

And of course you need to add the CD image of the Virtualbox Guest Additions in your SLES Virtual Machine :

Devices -> Insert Guest Additions CD image

Step :

1) Mount the cd image:

# mount /dev/sr0 /mnt

2) Install the package requirement:

# zypper in gcc kernel-default-devel

3) Enable "unsupported modules" to be loaded in the SLES's kernel:

Edit /etc/modprobe.d/10-unsupported-modules.conf

and set: allow_unsupported_modules 1

 

4) Run the Virtualbox Guest Additions installation script:

# cd /mnt

# ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing VirtualBox 5.0.14 Guest Additions for Linux............
VirtualBox Guest Additions installer
Copying additional installer modules ...
Installing additional modules ...
Removing existing VirtualBox non-DKMS kernel modules                  done
Building the VirtualBox Guest Additions kernel modules
Building the main Guest Additions module                              done
Building the shared folder support module                             done
Building the OpenGL support module                                    done
Doing non-kernel setup of the Guest Additions                         done
You should restart your guest to make sure the new modules are actually used

Installing the Window System drivers
Installing X.Org Server 1.15 modules                                  done
Setting up the Window System to use the Guest Additions               done
You may need to restart the hal service and the Window System (or just restart
the guest system) to enable the Guest Additions.

Installing graphics libraries and desktop services components         done

5) You can now reboot your system and check the if the new modules are used:

# reboot

and then after the reboot: 

# lsmod | grep vbox vboxsf                 47920  0 vboxvideo              12669  1 drm                   322623  2 vboxvideo vboxguest             298126  3 vboxsf

6) Voilà !

Removing the Anchor icon in Docky on openSUSE

1. Install gconf-editor

# zypper install gconf-editor

2. Launch gconf-editor
Press ALT+F2
enter "gconf-editor"
3. Go to apps > docky-2 > Docky > Items > DockyItem
 
4. Deselect "ShowDockyItem"

Now you can exit gconf-editor and the Anchor icon of Docky will disappear.

Cleaning /tmp on openSUSE 13.2

In the past openSUSE used an automated task to clean the content of /tmp. Long story short even before systemd arrival, a group of users complains about it on the openSUSE mailinglist, so the automated task (a cron job) for cleaning /tmp as been disabled.
Now that we used systemd by default on openSUSE, it has also been decided to disable this task in the systemd configuration.

So since you can have a /tmp greater than 1G in size with file older than 1 years, here is my simple solution :  install tmpwatch.

tmpwatch is a simple package, which install the following daily cron job :

cat /etc/cron.daily/tmpwatch
#! /bin/sh
flags=-umc
/usr/sbin/tmpwatch "$flags" -x /tmp/.X11-unix -x /tmp/.XIM-unix \
        -x /tmp/.font-unix -x /tmp/.ICE-unix -x /tmp/.Test-unix 10d /tmp
/usr/sbin/tmpwatch "$flags" 30d /var/tmp
for d in /var/{cache/man,catman}/{cat?,X11R6/cat?,local/cat?}; do
    if [ -d "$d" ]; then
        /usr/sbin/tmpwatch "$flags" -f 30d "$d"
    fi
done

And here we go, tmpwatch will  recursively removes files which haven't been accessed for 10 days in /tmp and 30 days in /var/tmp.

Installing Aurora/Nightly version of Firefox on openSUSE

- First be sure to get the correct architecture version of Aurora/Nightly for your current Linux system architecture.

You will find the Linux 32 and 64 bits version of Aurora here : http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/aurora/all/
And Nightly here :
http://nightly.mozilla.org/

- Then uncompress the archive in /opt/aurora or /opt/nightly :

mkdir /opt/aurora && tar -xjvf firefox-29.0a2.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2 -C /opt/aurora

- Now you can execute your "developer's version" of Firefox with :

/opt/aurora/firefox &

You might experience the following plugin error :
No plugin found or Install Flashplayer : file not found

To resolve this issue you have to do the following on a 64 bits system :

ln -s /usr/lib64/browser-plugins/ /home/USER/.mozilla/plugins

Activate/Deactivate wifi on openSUSE asks for administrator password

I was very annoyed by the behavior of Network Manager in openSUSE 12. Every time I want to enable/disable the wifi and want to automatically connect to my prefered wifi spot, the system asks for the administrator password...

This can be changed by editing the file /etc/polkit-default-privs.local and add :

org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.enable-disable-wifi            yes

then run the command :

# set_polkit_default_privs 

So now current logged user can enable or disable the wifi connection without the administrator password... Enjoy.