[resolved?] Don't Update!

[flarson]

Re: Don't Update!

OK, regarding the udev / "filesystem superblock in future" issue:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=540575

This says it applies if you are east of Greenwich.

[olembe]

Re: Don't Update!

I'm about 60 miles west of Greenwich, and in the same time zone. Presumably I'm having one-hour trouble because we're in summer time.

[sblass]

Re: Don't Update!

For anyone who is stuck the problem is /bin/sh. When bash gets upgraded the symlink fails causing all init scripts and others that use /bin/sh to fail. Get a root shell and run

dpkg --configure -a

. You may need to run it twice. Then try

aptitude -f install

At that point most everything should be fixed and when you reboot uor init system will run, starting all the services that failed to start before.

Then run

aptitude update

and

aptitude -f full-upgrade

or safe-upgrade if you prefer, until everything is as it should be.

Some of you will probably see messages about your filesystem being read-only. If you do , run

sudo mount -o remount /

to remount it read-write so you can proceed.

Sounds great, but I can't Esc to grub2 at boot, and with my keyboard locked I cant get to a terminal (or do anything for that matter) at the KDE login dialog.

As GreyGeek mentioned, I too was hit by the Jaunty alpha early upgrade snafu and now I get this, too. If me then barf/gag/hang/etc... I'm apparently a crap-magnet!

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Don't Update!

If your mouse and keyboard are hanging at the login screen, see here:
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3106466.0

You can add the following lines to your /etc/rc.local as a workaround:

start dbus
start hal

I haven't figured out how to get network-manager to autostart, but I'm working on it...

Edit: got it working.
If you have no mouse, keyboard, or networking on boot, add the following (in this order) to /etc/rc.local:

start network-manager
start dbus
start hal

And be sure to:

sudo chmod a+x /etc/rc.local

Edit: As of tonight (Sept 16) the most recent update seems to have solved this problem. I was able to remove the stuff in rc.local and get a normal startup (except for the udev errors).

[dibl]

Re: Don't Update!

I guess my strategy of waiting 'til the storm passed to update worked. I just now ran updates -- 134 upgraded packages, and 1 new package.. I got out of X and shut it down first, and did the dist-upgrade from the CLI. Upon restarting X, the keyboard and mouse were useless, but the Magic SysRq worked, so I used that to restart. After rebooting, everything is working as expected, including the video driver, compiz, and conky. It feels like being shot at and missed! 8)

[flarson]

Re: Don't Update!

I had a KK installation that I had not booted into for 2 weeks or more. I just did now so I could see what is happening. I did aptitude update and aptitude -f full-upgrade and upgraded about some 400 packages. I haven't rebooted yet or even logged out of KDM. I want to have some idea of what is happening first. So the time jumped by 5 hours to GMT, no reboot, just installing a new tzdata package. This system uses ntp to keep the clock in sync. By the way, Ubuntu has there own tzdata, entirely different than the Debian version. My debian unstable systems do not have a time problem.

Also there is no /lib/init/mount-functions.sh. This is used by
/etc/network/if-up.d/mountnfs
/etc/init.d/checkroot.sh
/etc/init.d/mountall.sh
/etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh
/etc/init.d/mountkernfs.sh
/etc/init.d/mtab.sh
and maybe others.
It was in initscripts until this upgrade, it is in the Debian version of initscripts, it is not in the Kubuntu version. Kubuntu uses the event-based upstart and is quite different than Debian in this respect, so maybe they don't need mount-functions.sh anymore, but my bet is they left it out accidentally.

I think these two probably cover the majority of the problems we have seen. The bash upgrade seems to have been fixed by today.

Edit: I see they have added mountall, which seems to replace the mount scripts in init. If things are not getting mounted that is probably where to look.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Don't Update!

.....
Sounds great, but I can't Esc to grub2 at boot, and with my keyboard locked I cant get to a terminal (or do anything for that matter) at the KDE login dialog.
...

Can you select the Recovery option from the Grub boot screen. When the Blue and Red console screen appears choose "Root with Network conncetion" -- IF you have eth0 up and running. Wireless won't work. From that root terminal you can do, as I mentioned before,

apt-get -f install (repeat until it gives no results)
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get dist-upgrade

[kubicle]

Re: Don't Update!

OK, regarding the udev / "filesystem superblock in future" issue:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=540575

This says it applies if you are east of Greenwich.

Sounds logical, if it's an issue of mixed utc/local time, on the other side of greenwich the timestamp would be "in the future" (whic will generate an error) and on the other side it would be more "in the past" (which would not create an error).

Edit: I see they have added mountall, which seems to replace the mount scripts in init. If things are not getting mounted that is probably where to look.

Yup, the init.d mount scripts are not called anymore (no symlinks in rcX.d), upstart seems to store it's "initscript equivalents" in /etc/init/

BTW, Debian seems to be moving away from initscripts as well.
http://lwn.net/Articles/351013/

[sblass]

Re: Don't Update!

GreyGeek, thanks for the reply. However, I cannot interrupt the boot process to get to grub2. Consequently, no possibility of selecting 'the Recovery option from the Grub boot screen'.

Great advice, though, if I could get there from here. Thanks

[doctordruidphd]

Re: [resolved?] Don't Update!

However, I cannot interrupt the boot process to get to grub2.

Once you get to the login screen, try ALT-SysRq-R followed by CTRL-ALT-F2
Does this give you a text screen?

If so, then login and try the following:

sudo /etc/init.d/kdm stop
sudo start network-manager
sudo start dbus
sudo start hal
sudo start kdm

That should get you into a useable kde session

If you get to the text console, you could 'sudo apt-get update' and 'sudo apt-get dist-upgrade' directly from the console. The current updates seem to have fixed this problem.

[dibl]

Re: Don't Update!

BTW, Debian seems to be moving away from initscripts as well.
http://lwn.net/Articles/351013/

That's a very informative article -- thanks!


On the "East of Greenwich" thing -- I don't completely fathom it. I guess, on a spherical planet, we're ALL east of Greenwich, eventually -- LOL. But on my rig, in North America, the filesystem time stamp is 4 hours in the future, i.e. I'm in Eastern US tz but timestamp is in Cape Verde / Azores tz. So I don't understand how that relates to "east of Greenwich"?

[olembe]

Re: [resolved?] Don't Update!

My timing issue seems now to be resolved. I've restarted a couple of times today and the clock has stayed at the right time, and there have been no fsck checks at startup. Still seeing the warning messages flash past during boot, though.

[flarson]

Re: Don't Update!

BTW, Debian seems to be moving away from initscripts as well.
http://lwn.net/Articles/351013/

That's a very informative article -- thanks!


On the "East of Greenwich" thing -- I don't completely fathom it. I guess, on a spherical planet, we're ALL east of Greenwich, eventually -- LOL. But on my rig, in North America, the filesystem time stamp is 4 hours in the future, i.e. I'm in Eastern US tz but timestamp is in Cape Verde / Azores tz. So I don't understand how that relates to "east of Greenwich"?

I think it is an indication that the problem is not the same one as mentioned in the link. I am 5 hours west of Greenwich and my time is screwed up, whereas the bug in the link only affects you if you are east of Greenwich.

And it is an interesting article. Debian is moving toward event based init, and that was a good explanation of why it is required. I really tend to agree with the comment about "who cares how fast your system boots", but then the other comment about dedicated systems like DVR's and audio/video needing to boot fast pointed out something I had not considered.

[GreyGeek]

Re: [resolved?] Don't Update!

I agree, Mando, boot up times are meaningless if you turn you box on in the moring and leave it on all day (18 hurs). I used to leave my boxes on 24/7 but quit that to cut down on wasted electricity.

It's nice to know about the shift in boot paradigm that is taking place, and what to expect in the near future.

[personman]

Re: [resolved?] Don't Update!

Fast booting is a nice perk for casual desktop users who simply boot it when they need it. I switched my MythTV box/print & file server from debian to karmic, boots fast, and fsck times on ext4 are excellent. Most of my machines I just boot when I need them. I've set KDE to login automatically and launch vino-server so I can administer it remotely. Very handy. I tend to switch back and forth between my laptop in the living room and my desktop in the basement, so fast boot times are nice.

When I was running Debian and ext3 I could go make coffee after a fsck started, and return to see it only 70% done. Now it probably takes less than a minute.

Booting vista is just painful. It's sorta like it teases you by showing you your desktop relatively quickly, but then it goes on to load for another 15 minutes in the background. I feel like I'm punishing my hard drive.