Release Notes
Show Contents: Release Notes
Top
  1. 1 Installation
  2. 2 System Upgrade
  3. 3 Packaging Changes
  4. 4 Drivers and Hardware
  5. 5 Desktop
  6. 6 Security
  7. 7 Technical
  8. 8 More Information and Feedback
openSUSE Leap 15.0

Release Notes

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!

Publication Date: 2018-06-15, Version: 15.0.20180615.d39b3dd
1 Installation
2 System Upgrade
3 Packaging Changes
4 Drivers and Hardware
5 Desktop
6 Security
7 Technical
8 More Information and Feedback

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.

Major new features of openSUSE Leap 15.0 are also listed at https://en.opensuse.org/Features_15.0.

1 Installation

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.

Make sure to also review Section 4, “Drivers and Hardware”.

1.1 Using Atomic Updates With the New System Role Transactional Server

The installer now supports a new system role Transactional Server that is an outcome of the openSUSE Kubic effort. This system role features a new update system that applies updates atomically (as a single operation) and makes them easy to revert should that become necessary. These features are based on the package management tools that all other SUSE and openSUSE distributions also rely on. This means that the vast majority of RPM packages that work with other system roles of openSUSE Leap 15.0 also work with the system role Transactional Server.

Note
Note: Incompatible Packages

Some packages modify the contents of /var or /srv in their RPM %post scripts. These packages are incompatible. If you happen upon such package, file a bug report.

To provide these features, this update system relies on:

  • Btrfs snapshots.  Before a system update is started, a new Btrfs snapshot of the root file system is created. Then, all the changes from the update are installed into that Btrfs snapshot. To complete the update, you can then restart the system into the new snapshot.

    To revert the update, simply boot from the previous snapshot instead.

  • A read-only root file system.  To avoid issues with and data loss because of updates, the root file system must not be written to otherwise. Therefore, the root file system is mounted read-only during normal operation.

    To make this setup work, two additional changes to the file system needed to be made: To allow writing user configuration in /etc, this directory is automatically configured to use OverlayFS. /var is now a separate subvolume which can be written to by processes.

Important
Important: Transactional Server Needs At Least 12 GB of Disk Space

The system role Transactional Server needs a disk size of at least 12 GB to accommodate Btrfs snapshots.

To work with transactional updates, always use the command transactional-update instead of YaST and Zypper for all software management:

  • Update the system: transactional-update up

  • Install a package: transactional-update pkg in PACKAGE_NAME

  • Remove a package: transactional-update pkg rm PACKAGE_NAME

  • To revert the last snapshot, that is the last set of changes to the root file system, make sure your system is booted into the next to last snapshot and run: transactional-update rollback

    Optionally, add a snapshot ID to the end of the command to rollback to a specific ID.

When using this system role, by default, the system will perform a daily update and reboot between 03:30 am and 05:00 am. Both of these actions are systemd-based and if necessary can be disabled using systemctl: 

systemctl disable --now transactional-update.timer rebootmgr.service

For more information about transactional updates, see the openSUSE Kubic blog posts https://kubic.opensuse.org/blog/2018-04-04-transactionalupdates/ and https://kubic.opensuse.org/blog/2018-04-20-transactionalupdates2/.

1.2 Minimal System Installation

The minimal system installation lacks certain functionality that is often taken for granted:

  • It does not contain a software firewall front-end. You can install the package firewalld additionally.

  • It does not contain a YaST. You can install the pattern patterns-yast-yast2_basis additionally.

1.3 Installing on Hard Disks With Less Than 12 GB of Capacity

The installer will only propose a partitioning scheme if the available hard disk size is larger than 12 GB. If you want to set up, for example, very small virtual machines images, use the guided partitioner to tune partitioning parameters manually.

1.4 UEFI—Unified Extensible Firmware Interface

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-installation of Windows 8 or later 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.

1.5 UEFI, GPT, and MS-DOS Partitions

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.

1.6 Scaling the Installer UI on Computers with High-DPI Displays

The YaST installer does not scale its UI for High-DPI displays by default. If you have a computer with a high-DPI display, you can set YaST to scale its UI automatically for the display. To do so, add the parameter QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=1 to the bootloader command line.

2 System Upgrade

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.

Make sure to also review Section 4, “Drivers and Hardware”.

Additionally, check Section 3, “Packaging Changes”.

2.1 Upgrading from openSUSE Leap 42.3

2.1.1 Postfix Admin Uses Backwards-Incompatible Directory Layout

Starting with the version 3.2, as shipped in openSUSE Leap 15.0, Postfix Admin (package postfixadmin) uses a new and backwards-incompatible directory layout:

  • The configuration files moved to /etc/postfixadmin.

  • The PHP code moved to /usr/share/postfixadmin.

  • The Smarty cache moved to /var/cache/postfixadmin.

Postfix Admin no longer reads configuration files from their previous locations and the configuration is not migrated automatically. Therefore, you need to migrate the following items manually:

  • Move config.local.php from /srv/www/htdocs/postfixadmin to /etc/postfixadmin.

  • If you made customizations to config.inc.php, ideally merge these customizations into /etc/postfixadmin/config.local.php. We recommended keeping config.inc.php unmodified.

  • In the Apache configuration, add or enable the alias /postfixadmin:

    • To make the alias available on all virtual hosts, run: 

      a2enflag POSTFIXADMIN && rcapache2 restart

    • To make the alias available only on a specific virtual host only, add the alias to the config of that virtual host.

3 Packaging Changes

3.1 Deprecated Packages

Deprecated packages are still shipped as part of the distribution but are scheduled to be removed the next version of openSUSE Leap. These packages exist to aid migration, but their use is discouraged and they may not receive updates.

To check whether installed packages are no longer maintained: Make sure that lifecycle-data-openSUSE is installed, then use the command: 

zypper lifecycle

4 Drivers and Hardware

4.1 Hang on Machines with Nvidia GPUs and Hybrid Graphics

With the kernel shipped in openSUSE Leap 15.0 GM, the Nouveau driver for Nvidia graphics card may hang at reboot, shutdown, or during runtime power management actions. This bug occurs primarily on system with hybrid graphics, such as laptops that include integrated Intel graphics and a discrete Nvidia graphics card.

The bug will be fixed in a maintenance update for the kernel. However, as the installation image does not receive updates, this issue may occur during installation or first boot even after that update has shipped. In that case, as a temporary workaround, boot with the option nouveau.modeset=0. After the updated kernel including the fix is installed, you can remove this option again.

4.2 KDE on Wayland Is Not Supported with Proprietary Nvidia Driver

The KDE Plasma Wayland session is not supported with the proprietary Nvidia driver. If you are using KDE and the proprietary Nvidia driver, stay with the X session.

5 Desktop

This section lists desktop issues and changes in openSUSE Leap 15.0.

5.1 No Default Compose Key Combination

In previous versions of openSUSE, the compose key combination allowed typing characters that were not part of the regular keyboard layout. For example, to produce “å”, you could press and release Shift–Right Ctrl and then press a twice.

In openSUSE Leap 15.0, there is no longer a predefined compose key combination because Shift–Right Ctrl does not work as expected anymore.

  • To define a system-wide custom compose key combination, use the file /etc/X11/Xmodmap and look for the following lines: 

    [...]
!! Third example: Change right Control key to Compose key.
!! To do Compose Character, press this key and afterwards two
!! characters (e.g. `a' and `^' to get 342).
!remove  Control  = Control_R
!keysym Control_R = Multi_key
!add     Control  = Control_R
[...]

    To uncomment the example code, remove the ! characters at the beginning of lines. However, note that the setup from Xmodmap will be overwritten if you are using setxkbmap.

  • To define a user-specific compose key combination, use your desktop's keyboard configuration tool or the command-line tool setxkbmap: 

    setxkbmap [...] -option compose:COMPOSE_KEY

    For the variable COMPOSE_KEY, use your preferred character, for example ralt, lwin, rwin, menu, rctl, or caps.

  • Alternatively, use an IBus input method that allows typing the characters you need without a Compose key.

5.2 Use update-alternatives to Set Login Manager and Desktop Session

In the past, you could use /etc/sysconfig or the YaST module /etc/sysconfig Editor to define the login manager and desktop session. Starting with openSUSE Leap 15.0, the values are not defined using /etc/sysconfig anymore but with the alternatives system.

To change the defaults, use the following alternatives:

  • Login manager: default-displaymanager

  • Wayland session: default-waylandsession.desktop

  • X desktop session: default-xsession.desktop

For example, to check the value of default-displaymanager, use: 

sudo update-alternatives --display default-displaymanager

To switch the default-displaymanager to xdm, use: 

sudo update-alternatives --set default-displaymanager \
  /usr/lib/X11/displaymanagers/xdm

To enable graphical management of alternatives, use the YaST module Alternatives that can be installed from the package yast2-alternatives.

5.3 No Screen Lock When Using GNOME Shell But Not GDM

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:

  1. Make sure that the package gdm is installed.

  2. Set GDM as the display manager: 

    sudo update-alternatives --set default-displaymanager \
  /usr/lib/X11/displaymanagers/gdm

  3. Reboot.

5.4 Scaling the SDDM UI on Computers with High-DPI Displays

The default login manager for KDE, SDDM, does not scale its UI for High-DPI displays by default. If you have a computer with a high-DPI display, you can set SDDM to scale its UI automatically for the display using the configuration file /etc/sddm.conf: 

[X11]
EnableHiDPI=true
ServerArguments=-nolisten tcp -dpi DPI_VALUE

Replace DPI_VALUE with an appropriate DPI value, such as 192. For best scaling results, use a DPI value that is a multiple of the default 96 DPI.

5.5 Scaling the YaST UI on Computers with High-DPI Displays

YaST does not scale its UI for High-DPI displays by default. If you have a computer with a high-DPI display, you can set YaST to scale its UI automatically for the display. To do so, set the environment variable QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=1.

5.6 Using Automatic Scaling in Qt Applications in Setups Which Mix High-DPI/Regular-DPI Monitors

Qt supports automatic per-monitor scaling on X. It uses the DPI value of the virtual X screen to calculate the font size for the primary monitor. By default, this value is 96 DPI. It uses the relative DPI of the primary monitor to derive font DPI for all other monitors.

Two widely used desktops will override this behavior of Qt, therefore this note does not apply to them:

  • GNOME will set Xft.dpi to the configured multiple of 96 DPI.

  • KDE Plasma disables the automatic scaling of Qt and uses a manual scaling configuration.

On other desktops, this behavior of Qt can lead to undesirable situations such as the following: If the primary display is High-DPI (>= 144 DPI), fonts in Qt applications that request scaling, such as VLC, are effectively scaled to half the desired size on all monitors. Applications which do not request scaling, such as YaST (with default settings), use the same DPI value on all monitors. Hence, they will look smaller on the High-DPI monitor.

You can use one of the following workarounds for this issue:

  • Use a monitor with a regular DPI value as the primary monitor. Applications that request scaling are then scaled appropriately on the High-DPI monitor.

  • Set an appropriate font DPI (Xft.dpi). You can do so either with the configuration utility of your desktop. Alternatively, after every login run the following command: 

    echo Xft.dpi:DPI_VALUE | xrdb -nocpp -merge

    Replace DPI_VALUE with an appropriate DPI value for the primary monitor.

5.7 Screen Sharing Does Not Work in Firefox or Chromium on Wayland

Firefox and Chromium normally allow Web-based tools such as videoconferencing applications to share the entire screen or individual application windows. This functionality is currently not supported in either browser when using a Wayland session.

To be able to share your screen in Firefox or Chromium, use an X session instead.

5.8 Playing MP3 Media Files

The codecs to play MP3 media files are shipped as part of the standard repository.

To use this decoder in gstreamer-based applications and frameworks, such as Rhythmbox or Totem, install the package gstreamer-plugins-ugly.

5.9 No Support for Type-1 Fonts in LibreOffice

LibreOffice 5.3 and higher do not support legacy Type-1 fonts (file extensions .afm and .pfb) anymore. Most users should not be affected by this, as current fonts are available either in the format TrueType (.ttf) or OpenType (.otf) formats.

If you are affected by this, convert Type-1 fonts to a supported format, such as TrueType and then use the converted fonts. Conversion is possible with the application FontForge (package fontforge) which is included in openSUSE. For information on scripting such conversions, see https://fontforge.github.io/en-US/documentation/scripting/.

5.10 FreeType Font Rendering Changes

FreeType 2.6.4 has a new default glyph hinting interpreter (version 38) that more closely matches other operating systems but may look “more fuzzy” to some. To restore the previous FreeType behavior, set the following environment variable at any level (system-wide, user-specific, or program-specific) of your choice: 

FREETYPE_PROPERTIES="truetype:interpreter-version=35"

5.11 Enabling KDE Plasma Browser Integration

Plasma browser integration for Firefox and Chromium/Chrome allows monitoring multimedia and downloads using KDE system tools and gives quick access to tabs via the Run Command bar of the KDE Plasma desktop.

The browser integration functionality consists of two parts that need to work together:

Note that this functionality is officially still in development and openSUSE Leap 15.0 ships with an early version of it.

5.12 Loading the Emacs psgml Module

Because of conflicts with Emacs modules from the default installation, openSUSE Leap 15.0 can no longer load the psgml module automatically. For more information, see the file README from the package psgml.

6 Security

This section lists changes to security features in openSUSE Leap 15.0.

6.1 systemctl stop apparmor Does Not Work

In the past, there could be confusion over the difference between how the very similarly named systemctl subcommands reload and restart worked for AppArmor:

  • systemctl reload apparmor properly reloaded all AppArmor profiles. (It was and continues to be the recommended way of reloading AppArmor profiles.)

  • systemctl restart apparmor meant that AppArmor would stop, thereby unloading all AppArmor profiles and then restart which left all existing processes unconfined. Only newly started processes would then be confined again.

Unfortunately, systemd does not provide a solution within its unit file format for the issue posed by the restart scenario.

Starting with AppArmor 2.12, the command systemctl stop apparmor will not work. As a consequence, systemctl restart apparmor will now correctly reload AppArmor profiles.

To unload all AppArmor profiles, use the new command aa-teardown instead which matches the previous behavior of systemctl stop apparmor.

For more information, see https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=996520 and https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=853019.

7 Technical

7.1 Updated Btrfs Subvolume Layout

openSUSE Leap 15.0 introduces a new default Btrfs subvolume layout that aims for the following:

  • Simplified snapshots and rollbacks

  • Prevention of accidental data loss

  • Better performance of databases and VM images stored in /var

Instead of using multiple Btrfs subvolumes for different subdirectories of /var, openSUSE Leap 15.0 ships with a single subvolume for all of /var. This new subvolume has copy-on-write functionality disabled.

There is no defined way of upgrading to this new Btrfs subvolume layout. Therefore, if you want to take advantage of it, make sure to freshly install openSUSE Leap 15.0 instead of upgrading.

For more information on the default Btrfs subvolume layout before and after this change, see https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:BTRFS.

7.2 Wicked: Using RFC 4361 DHCPv4 client-id on Ethernet

RFC 4361 updates the client-id defined in RFC 2132, section 9.14 to be compatible with DHCP 6 client-id (duid). The use of an RFC 4361 is mandatory on Infiniband (RFC 4390) and is also required to perform DNS record updates in the same zone for DHCP 4 and DHCP 6 addresses also on Ethernet.

In openSUSE Leap 15.0:

  • ISC DHCP 4.3.x server supports the new RFC 4361 (required for DNS update)

  • Wicked provides an option to send such a client-id and to automatically use a DHCPv6-based client-id in DHCPv4 (used on Infiniband).

To send the client-id during the installation, use linuxrc (also see https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Linuxrc) with the following ifcfg: 

ifcfg=eth0=dhcp,DHCLIENT_CLIENT_ID=01:03:52:54:00:02:c2:67,DHCLIENT6_CLIENT_ID=00:03:52:54:00:02:c2:67

For more information, see the documentation for the options dhcp4 "create-cid", dhcp6 "default-duid" in man 5 wicked-config, wicked duid --help, and wicked iaid --help.

The traditionally used RFC 2132 DHCPv4 client-id on Ethernet is constructed from the hardware type (01 for Ethernet) and followed by the hardware address (the MAC address), for example: 

01:52:54:00:02:c2:67

The RFC 4361 client-id starts with 0xff (instead of the hardware type), followed by the DHCPv6 IAID (the interface-address association ID that describes the interface on the machine), followed by the DHCPv6 DUID (client-id which identifies the machine).

Using the above hardware type-based and hardware address-based DUID (LLT type used by default), the new RFC 4361 DHCPv4 client-id would be:

  • Using the last bytes of the MAC address as the IAID: ff:00:02:c2:67:00:01:xx:xx:xx:xx:52:54:00:02:c2:67

  • When the IAID is a simple incremented number: ff:00:00:00:01:00:01:xx:xx:xx:xx:52:54:00:02:c2:67

The xx:xx:xx:xx in the DUID-LLT is a creation timestamp. A DUID-LL (00:03:00:01:MAC) does not have a timestamp.

8 More Information and Feedback

  • 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.

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