My system is really fouled up now. Starting with the updates on Feb 18, it seems the whole thing is falling apart. Before that it ran like clockwork.
First the pam-0.99.8.1-17 thing. Then the DVD burner quit working (just hangs when I hit the write to disk) and now nautilus won't start at all. Programs I wouldn't expect to crash, do so every time (scigraphica for example). Something went whacko today while talking to a client, the system became very very slow and unresponsive and since I had the client on the phone at the time, I just did a ctrl-alt-backspace and the problem seemed to fix itself, but I think I didn't look very good over that. ( This is a Q6600 w/3 gig. What can slow that down to a crawl? I didn't take time to look. ) Packages build wrong. Compiz insists on starting everytime I log in. You name it, it's happened in the past few days.
yum check-update reports nothing.
fontconfig won't build for --target=i386 (it did a week ago).
I'm not griping, really. I've been a Redhat/fedora user since Redhat 4. (I played with RH2, but was a slackware user at the time) I just want a working linux system. I remember having to calculate mode lines from my monitor manual to get X running.
But I'm starting to look around.
I'm really nervous about this. I ran FC4 for a long long time and it was so stable. On quite a few systems. It's still running on my little home server. I need a stable dev system. I've been making a living developing Linux systems for over 12 years now and I can't get own F8 box to run smooth? That sure doesn't look good to clients. I've spent dozens of hours trying to heal this box and it just seems to be getting worse.
It probably matters that this install was done as a clean F7 install which was live upgraded to F8 after about 2 weeks.
SO I see 4 choices: 1) Do a clean install of F8, essentially start over (I have separate /, /boot, /opt, /home, and /usr/local partitions), 2) try and fix this (the pam thing _really_ makes me leary), 3) cross my fingers and hope it stays up 'til F9 comes out and hope that is better, 4) jump ship to some other distro.
Knowing just how dangerous this is, I am asking for opinions. I've got a ton of code to write for a client and I seem to be spending hours mucking with system instead. I'm getting behind. I don't have time for this. Anxiety is taking it's toll. Grrrrrrrrrrr.
Maybe KDE'll work better ........
Robert
On Thu, 2008-02-21 at 23:09 -0700, Robert Wuest wrote:
My system is really fouled up now. Starting with the updates on Feb 18, it seems the whole thing is falling apart. Before that it ran like clockwork.
First the pam-0.99.8.1-17 thing. Then the DVD burner quit working (just hangs when I hit the write to disk) and now nautilus won't start at all. Programs I wouldn't expect to crash, do so every time (scigraphica for example). Something went whacko today while talking to a client, the system became very very slow and unresponsive and since I had the client on the phone at the time, I just did a ctrl-alt-backspace and the problem seemed to fix itself, but I think I didn't look very good over that. ( This is a Q6600 w/3 gig. What can slow that down to a crawl? I didn't take time to look. ) Packages build wrong. Compiz insists on starting everytime I log in. You name it, it's happened in the past few days.
yum check-update reports nothing.
fontconfig won't build for --target=i386 (it did a week ago).
I'm not griping, really. I've been a Redhat/fedora user since Redhat 4. (I played with RH2, but was a slackware user at the time) I just want a working linux system. I remember having to calculate mode lines from my monitor manual to get X running.
But I'm starting to look around.
I'm really nervous about this. I ran FC4 for a long long time and it was so stable. On quite a few systems. It's still running on my little home server. I need a stable dev system. I've been making a living developing Linux systems for over 12 years now and I can't get own F8 box to run smooth? That sure doesn't look good to clients. I've spent dozens of hours trying to heal this box and it just seems to be getting worse.
It probably matters that this install was done as a clean F7 install which was live upgraded to F8 after about 2 weeks.
SO I see 4 choices:
- Do a clean install of F8, essentially start over (I have
separate /, /boot, /opt, /home, and /usr/local partitions), 2) try and fix this (the pam thing _really_ makes me leary), 3) cross my fingers and hope it stays up 'til F9 comes out and hope that is better, 4) jump ship to some other distro.
Knowing just how dangerous this is, I am asking for opinions. I've got a ton of code to write for a client and I seem to be spending hours mucking with system instead. I'm getting behind. I don't have time for this. Anxiety is taking it's toll. Grrrrrrrrrrr.
Maybe KDE'll work better ........
Robert
I would create a new user and log in as the new user, and see if the problems disappears.
If they do, then the problems is easier to locate. If not, you could try to remove some of the programs with problems, and reinstall them.
Henning Larsen
Henning Larsen wrote:
I would create a new user and log in as the new user, and see if the problems disappears.
If they do, then the problems is easier to locate. If not, you could try to remove some of the programs with problems, and reinstall them.
What is the official way of re-installing a program in Fedora? In general "yum remove foo" will remove a large number of packages. Can one just remove the program with rpm and run "yum update"?
On Fri, 2008-02-22 at 13:47 +0000, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Henning Larsen wrote:
I would create a new user and log in as the new user, and see if the problems disappears.
If they do, then the problems is easier to locate. If not, you could try to remove some of the programs with problems, and reinstall them.
What is the official way of re-installing a program in Fedora? In general "yum remove foo" will remove a large number of packages. Can one just remove the program with rpm and run "yum update"?
-- Timothy Murphy
You are not the OP are you? I thought you was one of those fedora experts. :)
BTW. I don't think there is any "official way" for re-installing.
When I reinstall problematic packages I run pirut or yum to un-install, and make sure to check what dependent packages that's going to be un-installed. If important packages is about to be deleted, I often try to solve the problems other ways.
Henning Larsen
I don't think 'yum update' will reinstall a removed package. How would it know to update something that is not there? You'd need to use rpm to reinstall (or the software installer GUI).
I rebooted (I hate rebooting a Linux box, it's such an admission of defeat :) nautilus seems to be working for me, but the CD burner is still failing. Started a KDE session and k3b did burn a CD, only it was garbage because a bunch of files were just missing! No errors, just missing files.
I made a new user and logged into a gnome session as that user and the nautilus CD burner just hangs.
I don't exactly know why I am hung up on the CD burner, except it failing was the first symptom I saw after the Feb 18 updates. It was working fine before that.
Robert
On Fri, 2008-02-22 at 13:47 +0000, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Henning Larsen wrote:
I would create a new user and log in as the new user, and see if the problems disappears.
If they do, then the problems is easier to locate. If not, you could try to remove some of the programs with problems, and reinstall them.
What is the official way of re-installing a program in Fedora? In general "yum remove foo" will remove a large number of packages. Can one just remove the program with rpm and run "yum update"?
-- Timothy Murphy e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366 s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
Hello.
On Fri, 2008-02-22 at 07:11 -0700, Robert Wuest wrote:
I rebooted (I hate rebooting a Linux box, it's such an admission of defeat :) nautilus seems to be working for me, but the CD burner is still failing.
In my opinion, when a problem appears I always reboot my pc.
Started a KDE session and k3b did burn a CD, only it was garbage because a bunch of files were just missing! No errors, just missing files.
missing from the burned media?
Have you tried "yum remove k3b" and then "yum install k3b" Have you tried to burn with other programs?
Henning Larsen
Yes, files are missing from the burned CD. Hundreds of files are missing. It is not a permissions problem. My test of the data source is this:
find . -type f -exec cat "{}" ";" >/dev/null
and that reports no problems.
I have tried k3b and nautilus-cd-burner. Nautilus-cd-burner hanging was the first symptom I noticed. It is why I tried to re-log in and found the pam problem. Then the nautilus problem.
I have not tried reinstalling the CD burners.
Now I'm in a catch 22. I can't burn a CD to try ubuntu!
Robert
On Fri, 2008-02-22 at 15:23 +0100, Henning Larsen wrote:
Hello.
On Fri, 2008-02-22 at 07:11 -0700, Robert Wuest wrote:
I rebooted (I hate rebooting a Linux box, it's such an admission of defeat :) nautilus seems to be working for me, but the CD burner is still failing.
In my opinion, when a problem appears I always reboot my pc.
Started a KDE session and k3b did burn a CD, only it was garbage because a bunch of files were just missing! No errors, just missing files.
missing from the burned media?
Have you tried "yum remove k3b" and then "yum install k3b" Have you tried to burn with other programs?
Henning Larsen
On Fri, 2008-02-22 at 07:56 -0700, Robert Wuest wrote:
Yes, files are missing from the burned CD. Hundreds of files are missing. It is not a permissions problem. My test of the data source is this:
find . -type f -exec cat "{}" ";" >/dev/null
and that reports no problems.
I have tried k3b and nautilus-cd-burner. Nautilus-cd-burner hanging was the first symptom I noticed. It is why I tried to re-log in and found the pam problem. Then the nautilus problem.
I have not tried reinstalling the CD burners.
Now I'm in a catch 22. I can't burn a CD to try ubuntu!
Robert
On Fri, 2008-02-22 at 15:23 +0100, Henning Larsen wrote:
Hello.
On Fri, 2008-02-22 at 07:11 -0700, Robert Wuest wrote:
I rebooted (I hate rebooting a Linux box, it's such an admission of defeat :) nautilus seems to be working for me, but the CD burner is still failing.
In my opinion, when a problem appears I always reboot my pc.
Started a KDE session and k3b did burn a CD, only it was garbage because a bunch of files were just missing! No errors, just missing files.
missing from the burned media?
Have you tried "yum remove k3b" and then "yum install k3b" Have you tried to burn with other programs?
Henning Larsen
I am not an expert, and I have not read all your posts, but I would do a reinstall of the burner-apps. Why haven't you?
One thing you could try is to burn with lower speed. Sometimes when i burn at max speed on my cd-burner, files is missing. It is even possible to see that the media is "weak" written.
Henning
Henning Larsen wrote:
On Fri, 2008-02-22 at 07:56 -0700, Robert Wuest wrote:
Yes, files are missing from the burned CD. Hundreds of files are missing. It is not a permissions problem. My test of the data source is this:
find . -type f -exec cat "{}" ";" >/dev/null
and that reports no problems.
I am not an expert, and I have not read all your posts, but I would do a reinstall of the burner-apps. Why haven't you?
One thing you could try is to burn with lower speed. Sometimes when i burn at max speed on my cd-burner, files is missing. It is even possible to see that the media is "weak" written.
Also, there are different restrictions on filenames in ISO9660 even with the various extensions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9660 Are you sure the missing filenames are permitted?
On Fri, 2008-02-22 at 07:11 -0700, Robert Wuest wrote:
I don't think 'yum update' will reinstall a removed package. How would it know to update something that is not there? You'd need to use rpm to reinstall (or the software installer GUI).
yum install installs packages that have been removed.
I rebooted (I hate rebooting a Linux box, it's such an admission of defeat :) nautilus seems to be working for me, but the CD burner is still failing. Started a KDE session and k3b did burn a CD, only it was garbage because a bunch of files were just missing! No errors, just missing files.
I made a new user and logged into a gnome session as that user and the nautilus CD burner just hangs.
I don't exactly know why I am hung up on the CD burner, except it failing was the first symptom I saw after the Feb 18 updates. It was working fine before that.
Robert
On Fri, 2008-02-22 at 13:47 +0000, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Henning Larsen wrote:
I would create a new user and log in as the new user, and see if the problems disappears.
If they do, then the problems is easier to locate. If not, you could try to remove some of the programs with problems, and reinstall them.
What is the official way of re-installing a program in Fedora? In general "yum remove foo" will remove a large number of packages. Can one just remove the program with rpm and run "yum update"?
-- Timothy Murphy e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366 s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
-- ======================================================================= "Hi, I'm Professor Alan Ginsburg... But you can call me... Captain Toke." -- John Lovitz, as ex-Supreme Court nominee Alan Ginsburg, on SNL ======================================================================= Aaron Konstam telephone: (210) 656-0355 e-mail: akonstam@sbcglobal.net
Timothy Murphy wrote:
Henning Larsen wrote:
I would create a new user and log in as the new user, and see if the problems disappears.
If they do, then the problems is easier to locate. If not, you could try to remove some of the programs with problems, and reinstall them.
What is the official way of re-installing a program in Fedora? In general "yum remove foo" will remove a large number of packages. Can one just remove the program with rpm and run "yum update"?
The latest yum (3.2.11) in Rawhide supports a "reinstall" argument.
# yum reinstall <foo> works.
Rahul
On Fri, 2008-02-22 at 19:44 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Timothy Murphy wrote:
Henning Larsen wrote:
I would create a new user and log in as the new user, and see if the problems disappears.
If they do, then the problems is easier to locate. If not, you could try to remove some of the programs with problems, and reinstall them.
What is the official way of re-installing a program in Fedora? In general "yum remove foo" will remove a large number of packages. Can one just remove the program with rpm and run "yum update"?
The latest yum (3.2.11) in Rawhide supports a "reinstall" argument.
# yum reinstall <foo> works.
Rahul
That's nice. does it leave dependencies or reinstall those packages too?
Henning Larsen
Henning Larsen wrote:
On Fri, 2008-02-22 at 19:44 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Timothy Murphy wrote:
Henning Larsen wrote:
I would create a new user and log in as the new user, and see if the problems disappears.
If they do, then the problems is easier to locate. If not, you could try to remove some of the programs with problems, and reinstall them.
What is the official way of re-installing a program in Fedora? In general "yum remove foo" will remove a large number of packages. Can one just remove the program with rpm and run "yum update"?
The latest yum (3.2.11) in Rawhide supports a "reinstall" argument.
# yum reinstall <foo> works.
Rahul
That's nice. does it leave dependencies or reinstall those packages too?
It doesn't touch dependencies.
Rahul
On Fri, 2008-02-22 at 13:47 +0000, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Henning Larsen wrote:
I would create a new user and log in as the new user, and see if the problems disappears.
If they do, then the problems is easier to locate. If not, you could try to remove some of the programs with problems, and reinstall them.
What is the official way of re-installing a program in Fedora? In general "yum remove foo" will remove a large number of packages. Can one just remove the program with rpm and run "yum update"?
That is an appropriate procedure. -- ======================================================================= Innovation is hard to schedule. -- Dan Fylstra ======================================================================= Aaron Konstam telephone: (210) 656-0355 e-mail: akonstam@sbcglobal.net
Robert Wuest wrote:
My system is really fouled up now. Starting with the updates on Feb 18, it seems the whole thing is falling apart. Before that it ran like clockwork.
[..........]
I'm really nervous about this. I ran FC4 for a long long time and it was so stable. On quite a few systems. It's still running on my little home server. I need a stable dev system. I've been making a living developing Linux systems for over 12 years now and I can't get own F8 box to run smooth? That sure doesn't look good to clients. I've spent dozens of hours trying to heal this box and it just seems to be getting worse.
I wouldn't dream of using Fedora in a "Production Environment". I know people do, but frankly, Fedora is geared more toward enthusiasts (such as myself). If you want a truly "stable" production system, you should look elsewhere.
I would *never* use any distro that's known as "cutting edge" or "bleeding edge" in a production environment. Fedora would be at (or near) the top of my list of distros not to use in said environment.
It probably matters that this install was done as a clean F7 install which was live upgraded to F8 after about 2 weeks.
LOL!
Um.. yeah..
Are you *sure* you've been a Fedora user for several years now? :)
See http://preview.tinyurl.com/2p5m5c
Distro upgrades have been ill-advised since day one (although it's getting better). Personally I *never* do upgrades from one version to another, regardless of OS. It's just so much cleaner (and easier in the long run) to back up your files and do a fresh install.
SO I see 4 choices:
- Do a clean install of F8, essentially start over (I have
separate /, /boot, /opt, /home, and /usr/local partitions), 2) try and fix this (the pam thing _really_ makes me leary), 3) cross my fingers and hope it stays up 'til F9 comes out and hope that is better, 4) jump ship to some other distro.
Honestly, in your case I'd go with #4. But only because your system is for a "production environment".
Amd based on your past RedHat/Fedora experience, I'd recommend you dump Fedora and switch to CentOS.
If you otherwise still love Fedora, then dual boot Fedora and CentOS.
You'll get the best of both worlds.
Just my $.02
On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 12:12:25 -0700, Scott geekboy@angrykeyboarder.com wrote:
Distro upgrades have been ill-advised since day one (although it's getting better). Personally I *never* do upgrades from one version to another, regardless of OS. It's just so much cleaner (and easier in the long run) to back up your files and do a fresh install.
With the yum tools getting better, its actually pretty easy to clean things up now after an upgrade. You generally need to check for orphans (package-cleanup --orphans), dupes (package-cleanup --dupes) and incorrectly installed packages (rpm -Va), and config file changes (find /etc --type f '*.rpm*'). This can be easier than doing a fresh install followed by recustomization.
Robert Wuest wrote:
My system is really fouled up now. Starting with the updates on Feb 18, it seems the whole thing is falling apart. Before that it ran like clockwork.
First the pam-0.99.8.1-17 thing. Then the DVD burner quit working (just hangs when I hit the write to disk) and now nautilus won't start at all. Programs I wouldn't expect to crash, do so every time (scigraphica for example). Something went whacko today while talking to a client, the system became very very slow and unresponsive and since I had the client on the phone at the time, I just did a ctrl-alt-backspace and the problem seemed to fix itself, but I think I didn't look very good over that. ( This is a Q6600 w/3 gig. What can slow that down to a crawl? I didn't take time to look. ) Packages build wrong. Compiz insists on starting everytime I log in. You name it, it's happened in the past few days.
yum check-update reports nothing.
fontconfig won't build for --target=i386 (it did a week ago).
I'm not griping, really. I've been a Redhat/fedora user since Redhat 4. (I played with RH2, but was a slackware user at the time) I just want a working linux system. I remember having to calculate mode lines from my monitor manual to get X running.
But I'm starting to look around.
I'm really nervous about this. I ran FC4 for a long long time and it was so stable. On quite a few systems. It's still running on my little home server. I need a stable dev system. I've been making a living developing Linux systems for over 12 years now and I can't get own F8 box to run smooth? That sure doesn't look good to clients. I've spent dozens of hours trying to heal this box and it just seems to be getting worse.
It probably matters that this install was done as a clean F7 install which was live upgraded to F8 after about 2 weeks.
SO I see 4 choices:
- Do a clean install of F8, essentially start over (I have
separate /, /boot, /opt, /home, and /usr/local partitions), 2) try and fix this (the pam thing _really_ makes me leary), 3) cross my fingers and hope it stays up 'til F9 comes out and hope that is better, 4) jump ship to some other distro.
Knowing just how dangerous this is, I am asking for opinions. I've got a ton of code to write for a client and I seem to be spending hours mucking with system instead. I'm getting behind. I don't have time for this. Anxiety is taking it's toll. Grrrrrrrrrrr.
Maybe KDE'll work better ........
Robert
Have you checked your power supply voltages?
Your problems sound like mine just before my power supply died awhile ago.
You can also verify your installed packages using rpm.
man rpm
rpm --verify
You will get a message for every file that there is an issue with. You can also check individual packages.
rpm -verify k3b
You can get some errors due to updates that affect a package.
In my case, due to some extras installed, I get file size and time stamp errors in the above example using k3b.