Known misfeatures in the current release 0.7.9.2

Kdesktop in kernel 2.4 / 2.6

Depending on how Quantian is booted or started, either just the 2.4 or both 2.4 and 2.6 come up with kdesktop showing a segmentation fault, and the KDE desktop not being fully loaded. The easiest fix is start konsole (by clicking on the terminal icon in the panel at the bottom of the screen) and to manually type kdesktop followed by return. This manual invocation works, and the KDE system then comes up normally. I am puzzled by what causes it, and do not see it under VMware with kernel 2.6, or on my test laptop. It is however present on the dvd when the iso is burned.

Would be nice

TeXmacs fonts

It would be nice to not have to compute as many TeXmacs fonts on the fly. Tried to accomodate that by installing fonts from an .rpm from the site, not quite sure if that really helped. Ralf says he has added a fonts package for Debian, but will not upload it.

Done in previous releases

Boot prompt

You must enter knoppix lang=us at the dvd prompt for the newer kernel (and linux26 is equivalvent); simply hitting return hangs the boot process. For the openMosix-enabled 2.4.27 kernel, type linux24. We need to fix this in the isolinux.cfg file. Now fixed in 0.7.9.2.

Kdvi broken

Kdvi doesn't display any files. However, the older xdvi works fine, as do the pdf viewer so working with LaTeX is still possible. Fixed in 0.7.9.2 via medium-scale KDE upgrade after C++ transition.

Unionfs broken for kernel 2.4

Under kernel 2.4 with openMosix, only the first and much larger compressed iso file is 'seen' and accessible. The second one, merged by means of unionfs under kernel 2.6, is not available. This means that several directories (/opt, /usr/games, /usr/lib/j2se, /usr/share/doc, /usr/src, /usr/NX) are not available. Fixed in 0.7.9.2 thanks to Marco Caliari!

Knoppix buglets in linuxrc boot script

According to two messages on debian-knoppix, in 4.0.2 usb2 support is not activated at boot time, and there was also a ext2/ext3 issue [ though we already have covered that with Marco's files ]. See this post at knoppix.net for more. Fixed in 0.7.9.2 thanks to Marco Caliari!

Sound ?

On my laptop, sound no longer works. Not sure what changed that. Is this the same for others? Was in issue in 0.6.9.*, appears fixed now.

Konsole font

Running, say, pstree in a KDE konsole looks odd as the tree of process cannot be displayed. This works in rxvt and xterm. Probably a fonts issue. Fixed in 0.6.9.1.

Scientific Python does not pass all its tests

Running 'import scipy' followed by 'scipy.test' shows a few tests that are failing. Turns out that this was related to automatic loading of the tuned Atlas libraries, and the Knoppix settings in /etc/ld.so.conf conflicted with what Atlas requires. Fixed in 0.4.9.6.

Autodiscovery issue in 0.4.9.2 / 0.4.9.3

The following text comes from the announcement for 0.4.9.2.

    o openMosix autodiscovery
      
      In my tests last night, two machines were not 'seeing' each other
      out of the box using autodiscovery. Following a hint at
          http://howto.ipng.be/openMosixWiki/index.php/FAQ
      I opted for a quick four-step correction:

      1) edit /etc/hosts and a) remove the 'Knoppix' entry from the localhost
         definition and b) add a new entry for the hostname Knoppix with the
	 actual (dhcp-provided) ip address, i.e. change the file to

	 	 192.168.1.100  Knoppix
		 127.0.0.1	localhost

      2) edit /etc/default/openmosix.config and set/uncomment
	         AUTODISC=0
         to turn autodiscovery off

      3) edit /etc/openmosix.map and define a simple three machine cluster
         via an entry
	 	 1 192.168.100.3
	 
      4) finally force a restart of openMosix via (as root)
		 /etc/init.d/quantian-openmosix restart

      After doing that on all three machines, and starting 'openmosixview' as
      root then shows all machines and a test migration of a few Monte Carlo
      simulations worked without a glitch.

      I'd would welcome suggestions from those more familar with openMosix
      and autodiscovery

This was fixed in 0.4.9.4 and 0.4.9.5 by explicitly configuring the eth0 interface.

KDE kticker bar

The Emacs icon we added in lieu of OpenOffice is not visible, a real one would be nicer. Adding a few more key icons would ne nice too. Done in 0.4.9.4. 0.4.9.5 also adds a custom openMosixview icon, thanks to Matt Rechenburg.

r-cran-gtkdevice omitted

R --gnome can't plot without it, package exists and will be added next time. While we're add it, the r-cran-mcmc and r-cran-coda packages should go in. Done in the 0.3.9.* series.

Texmacs broken

We were unlucky with the then current pick of texmacs from unstable, see Debian bug report #194587 which is fixed in unstable. Fixed in Quantian 0.3.