Several issues after upgrading

[MikeM]

I've upgraded my system (a Dell Inspiron 411Z) on Sunday, and have since been trying to get around several issues:

1. During the upgrade process, I received a message that the upgrade ran into an error and the system might be left in an unstable state. The system managed to reboot and start up, though it did give me a "system problem detected" message during boot (and again when I booted another time). I wasn't able to find out which problem was actually detected. At any rate, the problem that is most visible to me is that apps that need libgvc (a Graphviz library, used by Emacs and ImageMagick among others) are trying to find libgvc.so.5 while the current libgvc version is libgvc.so.6. I've tried removing and reinstalling Emacs, ImageMagick and Graphviz itself but it hasn't had an impact. When trying dpkg I get:

sudo dpkg --configure -a
[sudo] password for user:
Setting up emacsen-common (2.0.7) ...
Install emacsen-common for emacs24
emacsen-common: Handling install of emacsen flavor emacs24
emacs24: error while loading shared libraries: libgvc.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
ERROR: install script from emacsen-common package failed
dpkg: error processing package emacsen-common (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
emacsen-common


Emacs and ImageMagick are apps that I use frequently, so this is really a pain.


2. The screensaver doesn't start. I use kslideshow without requiring a password, it works fine when I press "test" but doesn't kick in. When I leave the system the screen just remains as I left it for 30 minutes, then it turns off.


3. Digikam has a segmentation fault whenever I try to start it. Seems to be an issue related to phonon_gstreamer.so.



Can anyone help me figure out how to deal with any of these?

Thanks!

Mike.

[Mike_]

For the aptitude error, if it exists, install libgvc5 first.
Otherwise try to remove emacs and then reinstall it after dpkg --configure -a

Hopefully after that, another dpkg --configure -a will resolve all your issues

[josefko]

I would recomend a fresh install with saving home directory. I practised these steps to save home directory maybe two years ago and I hope that it still works:

• - Immediately after start of fresh install choose that you want to divide disk manually
• - Define mount point / on the old Linux disk partition
• - Then you will be asked, if you want reformat Linux disk partition
• - If you answer no, all files in home directory will stay intact and all old system files will be removed and replaced with a fresh install

[MikeM]

Thanks to both of you for your suggestions. I managed to reactivate the screensaver and filed a bug to Digikam for the phonon-related issue. I compiled Digikam 3.5.0 myself withhout the phonon-based component (it is optional) and it works, so the only issue that still bothers me is the libgvc issue. Now, I don't think that justifies a complete reinstall (I have other stuff beside the home directory, tools that I installed myself etc. and I prefer to avoid it if possible). As for installing libgvc5, this is also problematic, firstly because it's not in the repository for Trusty, and secondly because it's in conflict with libgvc6 which Trusty uses - so I even if I did get it and put it in place I'm not sure it'd work. It seems to me that even though the library is not installed, it is still listed in some registry and apps that need libgvc read that registry and believe they should look for libgvc5 instead of libgvc6. So actually what I need to figure out is where is that registry and how to remove the incorrect listing. What do you guys think?

[Mike_]

Thanks to both of you for your suggestions. I managed to reactivate the screensaver and filed a bug to Digikam for the phonon-related issue. I compiled Digikam 3.5.0 myself withhout the phonon-based component (it is optional) and it works, so the only issue that still bothers me is the libgvc issue. Now, I don't think that justifies a complete reinstall (I have other stuff beside the home directory, tools that I installed myself etc. and I prefer to avoid it if possible). As for installing libgvc5, this is also problematic, firstly because it's not in the repository for Trusty, and secondly because it's in conflict with libgvc6 which Trusty uses - so I even if I did get it and put it in place I'm not sure it'd work. It seems to me that even though the library is not installed, it is still listed in some registry and apps that need libgvc read that registry and believe they should look for libgvc5 instead of libgvc6. So actually what I need to figure out is where is that registry and how to remove the incorrect listing. What do you guys think?

In linux the programs define directly what libraries they want. Hence my suggestion to purge emacs and then reinstall it later on. It seems to me that you still have an old emacs version.

[MikeM]

I purged and reinstalled, but that didn't fix it. However I did manage to overcome the problem (or so it seems). The purging/reinstalling doesn't help unless it fixes the corrupt library registry (which it didn't). Eventually what I did was:

sudo ldconfig /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu

This rebuilt the configuration files, and now the system doesn't search for non-existent libraries. I have now managed to reinstall emacs and ImageMagick and in a simple "does it crash when starting" test they appear to work fine. Thanks for taking the time to look!

[GreyGeek]

Snowhog's remedy is great for these situations:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade