Re: Gnome totally broke

[Jimmie Houchin <jhouchin@texoma.net>]

[snip]
Would I be reasonably okay if when I upgrade my currently working setup
doing apt-get upgrade, if apt-get makes no comments other than number of
packages and size of download doing the upgrade? This would seem to not
break anything other than whatever bugs I discover in/during testing.

If apt-get makes comments about various packages I could just wait until
a later date when the are ready.

With a working system upgrading for me will only be a periodic thing.
The only time it would be an issue would be if I attempted to install
software which depended on newer packages than I have. Apt-get will
handle that anyway.

> > > One of the things that'd be *really* helpful is logs of the upgrades. If
> > > you're using apt-get at the commandline, then it's trivially easy to
> > > get good logs: just run "script" first. [...]
> > I did my upgrades from apt-get. I am on a PC at work. What are you
> > referring to here as "script". Is this a commandline option for apt-get?
> 
> Here's an example of me logging my attempt to say "echo hi":
> 
>         [aj@blae ~]$ script
>         Script started, file is typescript
>         [aj@blae ~]$ echo hi
>         hi
>         [aj@blae ~]$ exit
>         Script done, file is typescript
> 
> it logs every character that appears. So ./typescript after the above
> looks like:
> 
>         [aj@blae ~]$ cat typescript
>         Script started on Wed Apr 25 17:03:09 2001
>         [aj@blae ~]$ echo hi
>         hi
>         [aj@blae ~]$ exit
> 
>         Script done on Wed Apr 25 17:03:11 2001

Thanks for the lesson. I believe I'll start doing that as a rule using
the -q option as suggested by Toby. This will also provide a learning
opportunity for me.

> When using apt-get, you'll get all sorts of messy stuff related to the
> percentage counting, but that's okay.
> 
> > What I know in the process I took over several complete reinstalls on a
> > clean drive is this, dist-upgrade to Woody left me with an unusable
> > system due to dependencies not met. Or should I say Gnome/X11 were in a
> > state of disrepair.
> 
> The more precise the better. It's not clear what happened in the above;
> did you let apt remove packages that you didn't want removed that broke
> gnome for you? Or did apt come up with a reasonable upgrade without
> removing packages that then didn't work after it all got installed? That
> sort of information is pretty important as far as fixing whatever went
> wrong goes.
> 
> apt doesn't really let you have any unmet dependencies on your system,
> so it's unlikely that that's the real explanation for your system being
> unusable. There would've had to have been some other step inbetween.

I believe my initial issues in the first upgrades was X. The
configuration setup, symlinks or somesuch was broken in Woody but had
been fixed in Sid. This I got from the mailing list. The Woody upgrade
did remove a lot of the Gnome stuff but did not replace. As I didn't get
thru X I didn't really see Gnome.

I'm comfortable with my current setup. Uptime is now at 2 days, seldom
get that with Windows/Mac. I see no reason for my uptime to keep going.
:)

I have changed my sources from Sid to Woody.

> > I would rather be a positive contributor than a negative detractor. I'll
> > be a good guy and go read the bug page. Is there any other documentation
> > on how I can provide usefull data when something fails?
> 
> There *ought* to be, and there *used* to be... Dunno if there is any
> nowadays though. Using script is probably a good start.

I'll look for some when I have something to contribute.

Thanks for the information and help.

Jimmie Houchin