[SOLVED] Disasterous update!

[GreyGeek]

A few days or perhaps a week ago I had 132 apps upgrade. Things went smoothly. I recompiled my wifi driver (88x2bu) and it worked well. All was well in the garden.

This afternoon a 320 app upgrade was downloaded and installed. I could tell instantly that on rebooting to get the new kernel running that the update was a disaster. The first clue was the appearance of garbage in the Konsole where typed text should appear. The garbage cleared up when I pressed the enter key but until then I am typing blind. Another clue was the missing "v^X" icons in the upper right corner of every application. I didn't expect the wifi to work because of the new kernel, and I wasn't disappointed. Typing the command in blind resulted in an 88x2bu.ko which worked well. I could not resize windows. When I opened FireFox it was no bigger than a playing card on the screen. Ctl+Q didn't close every app, and on many apps the File menu choice didn't work and if Ctl+Q didn't work I had to open the system monitor and stop the errent app in it, then use the SysMon to close itself.

Fixing everything was quick and easy. I opened a Konsole, sudo'd to root, mounted the rootfs on /mnt and mv'd @ to @old. Then I took the snapshot I made before I did the update and recreated @. After a reboot I was back in a functioning system as it was before the upgrade.

All in all, this upgrade was the worst I have ever experienced in over 10 years. But, KDE Neon isn't a distro, it's a dev tool.

[kubicle]

I've had no issues with recent Neon updates. How did you perform the upgrade and are you sure you did a full-upgrade (or dist-upgrade)?

Missing window buttons (and window borders) is most likely a kwin issue (kwin is not running...could crash on startup because of version mismatches).

I understand reverting to a snapshot if you need to do essential work with the machine, but it is usually better to troubleshoot first what went wrong, otherwise you may experience the same the next time you upgrade (this doesn't seem to be a universal problem with Neon updates, since I'm not affected).

[Beerislife]

I read on Facebook that some folks were missing buttons and borders but my update for KDE Neon went off without a hitch...

[claydoh]

There seemed to be a lot of different issues with this massive update -- Plasma as well as Frameworks upgrades together.
I had zero issues myself.
I know that they were having issues with the build server recently, which may explain the backlog and delay in getting these updates, and I am guessing that having both Plasma and Frameworks upgraded at the same time was a contributing factor.

[Snowhog]

This morning, my neon KDE neon User Edition had 303 packages updated. No issues what so ever.

The one niggle I see is that Firefox (100.0.2) behaves like it's buffering everything.

[claydoh]

The one niggle I see is that Firefox (100.0.2) behaves like it's buffering everything.

That went away once I rebooted, though I don't think I had the FF update at the same time as the Neon ones yesterday. I'd also moved my OS drive to the new computer as well. so i assumed it was probably from that.

[Snowhog]

That went away once I rebooted

Thanks. Yeah, I just now relaunched the OS (running in a VM) and Firefox doesn't feel laggy now.

[GreyGeek]

I ALWAYS do a full-upgrade. Rebooting after the upgrade, and several times while trouble shooting, didn't help.

I was typing in the blind when I did "modprobe 88x2bu", and the wifi turned on. I was also typing in the blind when attempted to recompile the wifi driver for the new kernel. I cd'd into ~/project, followed by make clear, and make. The make command failed several times at the same point with the same message.

Another serious problem was with my Iris Xe GPU driver. Like always, it was listed as "Mesa Intel@ Iris XE Graphics", but it wasn't well behaved. Iris XE or Plasma? Most of the menu options on the various apps didn't work. Left clicking on "File" with the intentions of clicking on "Quit" wouldn't work. As I said before, to close all the apps I tried to use I had to use the SysMon app, go to "applications" and right mouse on each one and click the "close" option.

I considered my options. Another distro? SUSE Tumbleweed? MyLinux? Stay with Neon? Back to Kubuntu 22.04?

I decided to try Kubuntu 22.04 and downloaded today's image and burned it to a USB stick. It booted nicely, although slow. My Iris XE GPU worked nicely. All the apps had all the dressings, and all the menus worked as they should. My HP p1606dn duplex laser was recognized and configured automatically.

I plugged in an ethernet cable to get Internet because my wifi dongle wasn't recognized. Browsing, I found the Cudy website and the 88x2bu driver for my AC1300S Cudy wifi dongle. I downloaded it but before I tried it I saw the following installation procedure for the 88x2bu driver on github. It is similar to what I used to get the wifi running in Neon.

I couldn't boot a LiveUSB and expect the kernel to come along because the LiveUSB is not persistent, but I would know whether or not the compile would work. The Cudy driver was developed for the 5.8 kernel. The current Neon kernel on my system is 5.14 oem.

sudo apt update
sudo apt -y install dkms git bc
git clone https://github.com/fastoe/RTL8812BU.git
cd RTL8812BU
VER=$(sed -n 's/\PACKAGE_VERSION="\(.*\)"/\1/p' dkms.conf)
sudo rsync -rvhP ./ /usr/src/rtl88x2bu-${VER}
sudo dkms add -m rtl88x2bu -v ${VER}
sudo dkms build -m rtl88x2bu -v ${VER} <--------
sudo dkms install -m rtl88x2bu -v ${VER}
sudo modprobe 88x2bu
sudo reboot

It died on the marked sudo line.

I am going to stick with Neon and continue to watch the apt --upgradable list to see what's coming down the pike. I can try the upgrades every so often and roll back if I can't get things to work. Primary importance: Intel Iris XE and the wifi.

[GreyGeek]

Noticed that the upgrade list showed an additional 5 files, making it a 365 pkg updated. I took the bait ...
After downloading the latest github install for the rtl88x driver I did the update and installed the new driver.
And BOOM! Just like that the upgrade a second time went without a hitch and appears to be perfect!

Deciding to stay with Neon was a good choice, especially at 81 and with my diminished learning capacities.

[GreyGeek]

Just a quick note to say that since the 365 app upgrade, and reinstalling dkms, the Plasma desktop is snappier than I ever recall it to be.
Apps open in an instant and are very quick. No problems so far. Glad I stayed with Neon.

[MoonRise]

Glad I hadn't updated yet. I will now.

[dejjanku]

Good to know. Beside not understanding benefits of rolling updates which make system unstable, there are obvious disadvantages of frequent and untested updates. Moreover, sudo software-properties-qt still can be run only from terminal in order to accept sudo password...

[claydoh]

Moreover, sudo software-properties-qt still can be run only from terminal in order to accept sudo password...

That is a kubuntu bug, unrelated to KDE Neon


As to a rolling Plasma, well that is the whole point of KDE Neon

Thus recent jumbo set of updates only happened due to a backlog created by their build servers being caput for a while. Frameworks, Plasma, and KDE gear have different, spaced out release cycles, so normally they would not have all been updated at the same time, well, at least Frameworks and Plasma here. I would heavily bet that this would not have happened
if these updates had come separately, and relatively "on time" (frameworks 5.94 on May14, Plasma 5.24.5 on May 3), there would not have been a mess some people saw.

I do wonder why a good chunk of us didn't have any issues at all.

[GreyGeek]

I've been using Neon since last September. Before that I used Kubuntu since Jan of 2009, except for about 3 months when I tried Neon several years ago.
I decided to stay with Neon because I got the impression that there were more pkgs in the update than the intial 320 that was available for update. And, I'm getting lazy in my old age.
When the total pkgs to update reached 325 and stayed there a couple days I guessed that another upgrade would result in success, and it did.
The reward was a Plasma desktop that is the snappiest I've ever used, and a rock stable wifi. The Intel Iris XE gpu is presenting a fabulous image in detail and depth.
My Minecraft FPS varies between 125 to 425.
It's the Neon I am used to.