The biggest breaker of Arch Linux, ever...

ozar · 2006-02-20 20:50:31

Damn, I've never seen so many posts about anything breaking Arch the way the new Xorg 7.0 stuff has, especially in such a short time. :shock:

How about the rest of you? Do you remember anything ever causing more havoc among upgraders and fresh installers?

mpie · 2006-02-20 20:52:31

Yeah devfs/udev was the same....

Snowman · 2006-02-20 21:00:09

The switch to the initrd kernel was also similar. Luckily, these are one-time only upgrade.

Mr Green · 2006-02-20 21:02:00

would not happen if we never upgraded ...... ;-) now that would be /dev/dull

ozar · 2006-02-20 21:03:23

mpie wrote:

Yeah devfs/udev was the same....

The devfs/udev upgrade went smooth as silk for me, but the xorg 7 thingy is kicking me in the arse. I've tried both, upgrading and freshing installing and still getting lots of errors. The wiki links and related posts here haven't helped so far, either.

Yeah, Snowman, I'm looking forward to getting past this one, too.

ozar · 2006-02-20 21:04:34

Mr Green wrote:

would not happen if we never upgraded ...... ;-) now that would be /dev/dull

hehe... I was thinking exactly the same thing, just before I tried upgrading.

Mr Green · 2006-02-20 21:09:58

you need two arch installs a broken one to test stuff & a stable one ,,,

you can then mess up to your hearts content before touching your prize partition

udev xorg initrd are major changes but no everyone wants it working now ... not going to happen if your system is broke ...

I vote we bring back devfs & linuxconf ;-)

iBertus · 2006-02-20 21:12:48

I've had little trouble with these upgrades, but I am using a home-rolled kernel. I've completely avoided the initrd stuff because I don't really see the point.

Mr Green · 2006-02-20 21:24:32

exactly .... we have not had a choice....

If we are told there are benefits (other than scsi!) fair enough but loading thousands of modules or rebuilding initrd.img every kernel is not my idea of fun

less time blasting stuff lol

Dusty · 2006-02-20 23:11:16

I think we've had more posts with xorg than with any of the previous stuff, yes. It seems it wasn't very well documented. People using testing had problems and asked questions, but the wiki wasn't formalized.

Dusty

Cotton · 2006-02-20 23:37:27

Not sure what the rush was to get xorg out of Testing, considering it has such major ramifications for anyone using a GUI.

X is a blackart for many people - I avoid modifying it at the best of times.....if its not broke, don't fix it.

I think the scale of these problems could have been predicted, and the upgrade made more bulletproof, particularly now Arch is catering to a substantially increased population of "intermediate" linux users rather than the original "gurus".

T-Dawg · 2006-02-20 23:54:21

I still don't understand why xorg decided to go modular. I mean who the hell wants the headache of having to sift through 80,000 godamn packages to get a working system and for the sake of saving oh approximently 1mb space. I seriously hope I'm missing something here.....

bpisciot · 2006-02-20 23:55:56

Interesting thread for me. I spent the weekend wrestling with the new Xorg (from testing) on a spare laptop machine. I was able to get it working, but barely. Quite a bit that was not functional.

This morning, I see that Xorg has hit current and I'm thinking "this is premature." But I go ahead and update one of my two remaining Arch boxes.

The result? I have a functional X environment, but...

I have a crippled mouse (no working scroll wheel, yet). My KDE background is busted: no pretty pictures on the background, right mouse click doesn't work.. I'm not sure I can get back to my old color resolution (used to be 24 bit, now it's at 16 bit). It took me hours to get to this point, and I still don't have all the parts of X working satisfactorily.

Oh, and just at the most irritating moment of debugging this thing, I couldn't get connected to the forums. I'm imagining that hordes of upgraders--like me--are trying to hit the forums in a desperate search for help.

I think I'll hold off on updating my main Arch box until some of the kinks are worked out.

Bob

elasticdog · 2006-02-21 00:34:05

bpisciot wrote:

I think I'll hold off on updating my main Arch box until some of the kinks are worked out.

Agreed...I just came looking for info about the xorg/bitstream-vera conflict and ended up realizing all these problems are from the 7.0 upgrade. I think I'll wait a bit until things get sorted out before I try upgrading.

ozar · 2006-02-21 01:57:04

Okay, I finally got it working and am posting from it now, but there are lots of issues that need to be addressed. After all the work it took to get this going even with a fresh install, it's clear at least to me that xorg 7.0 wasn't ready for the "current" repo just yet.

In fact, I'm going to revert back to my old xorg setup and use that until this mess is straightened out.

ozar

FJ · 2006-02-21 04:00:13

That's why I never upgrade when a huge update like Xorg is freshly put into Current. I wait several weeks and then do it. I just sit and watch closely.

codemac · 2006-02-21 04:15:25

This is why I read the announcement and blog pages. They tell you this stuff is coming. If things like xorg7 are sitting in testing, I try to have them on my system so that way when the update comes around to current, I've all ready known, fixed, and done it on my time instead of the day they move it to current.

Cerebral · 2006-02-21 04:44:51

Well, I think the majority of ALL problems can be summed up by one of three things:

1) Mirror sync issues. I don't know how many people I've talked to already that only got HALF the update when they did a pacman -Syu, and that borked stuff royal, because the mirror wasn't totally synched yet.

2) Improper dependency lists on KDE stuff (and possibly other stuff too). This got fixed rather quickly, but alot of people were missing necessary libs to run KDE properly. The same happened with Gaim too, now that I think about it, and is probably present elsewhere.

3) The upgrade from Xorg 7 xorg-clients as a single package to split packages, causing a bunch of files to disappear. This one only affected the people who were already using Xorg 7 from testing. This one was caused by the behaviour of pacman when files move from one package to another -- it's a tough one to catch, I'd imagine.

So, in summary, these problems were problems on the pacman/server side - for that reason it's not surprising that they hit everyone. Problems with udev or initrd were more on the individual system-by-system basis - prepared people could be ready and do what they needed to do; there was nothing inherently wrong with the packages or the mirrors. Plus the Xorg upgrade is massive compared to the initrd/udev stuff.

Long and short of it; I'm not surprised there were more issues to deal with, when just considering the circumstances.

hypermegachi · 2006-02-21 05:00:03

Cerebral wrote:

1) Mirror sync issues. I don't know how many people I've talked to already that only got HALF the update when they did a pacman -Syu, and that borked stuff royal, because the mirror wasn't totally synched yet.

is it possible to figure out if the repositories are synced or not? so far the only time i notice is when i get a whole bunch of local version newer than repository.

iphitus · 2006-02-21 05:06:29

For rthose that think we should not have upgraded at all. (you know who you are). Debian stable is looking quite attractive.

Arch is meant to be on the bleeding edge. Xorg7 went modular, so we do. Or would you prefer we just used Xfree86 or Xorg6.8 because they worked. Then the ATI + NVidia people would be unhappy because their drivers would have stopped working after time.

Devfs was deprecated. Because it sucked. It was dated, it had a hideous codebase. It had bugs that could not be fixed without a major redevelopment. Kernel devs didnt want to touch it. It's deprecation and removal was inevitable.

These things needed to happen, there isnt any avoiding them. Xorg7 modular sat in testing for ages. Maybe you should have tested it. Whining doesnt help. Filing bugs and patches does.

As for initrd/initramfs and having heaps of modules loaded. You have less in your kernel than you have ever had. There's at least 30 different IDE drivers in the kernel. You had every single one in your kernel. You had every single filesystem in your kernel that people may have wanted to use. You had countless things compiled in, that you never used. Now, you have substantially less, because initramfs/initrd allows the system to only load what you need. Of course, it tends to add a few more - no hardware detection is perfect, but nowhere near as many as were previously included.

Make patches not war.

iphitus

cactus · 2006-02-21 06:58:03

iphitus..sorry to jump in but...

There is a decided difference between not updating anything..ever..and pushing out an update with considerable issues. Suffice it to say, people *generally* want to believe that when they update in the morning..their system will continue to function, to a large extent.
Call it crazy if you will..

As for the kernel and initrd's.. I still think it was pointless. Yeah.
You can say, "if you don't like it..build your own kernel". Sure...And if you didn't like everything in a default kernel..build your own modular kernel.. round and round it goes. Another debilitatingly pointless argument.

meh. The more things change, the more they stay the same. As usual, I will just take the rest of my opinions..and put them in an envelope, and mail them to someone who gives a damn...

anykey · 2006-02-21 11:54:21

I have to disagree here, too...

When I joined arch, there was not exactly a hassle to shove updates from testing to current. I have been on Arch for some good two and a half years now.

devfsd vs. udev didnt hit me as I always ran udev, from the moment it was feasible to do so.

I never use arch stock kernels. I dont like the way they were distributed back then (without full sources) and I just dont care how they are distributed now. First step on Arch box? IgnorePkg = kernel26.

so this didnt hit me, either.

if bleeding edge means... upgrade = fuck up system...

then you may keep your bleeding edge well to yourself. Arch was not like this some time ago. I wonder where that spirit is gone, to be BETTER than others, not "more bleeding edge" and "oh noes! I moved a semicolon! New version!!!! fire up the synches."

anyway, I am just ranting right now and hope this is never gonna happen again with this distro. I know several people who got alienated from gentoo by just this shitty hassle to rush upgrades (no, you dont have to be as slow as debian is. there is a way to be the middle of it).

just my 2 cents. If I was a windows user, and looked out for a switch... I would be shocked and return to my beloved safety of corporate happiness if I witnessed $MYSELF_YESTERDAY_TOILING_WITH_ARCH. And this opinion would be firm in place. I'd never seek to switch EVER again.

(Again, just ranting.)

Aerandir · 2006-02-21 12:37:16

Anykey was the one who tought me to love Arch and I still do...

But this Xorg stuff tought me a lesson:
1. chmod -R a-r /etc (preserve all config files)
2. pacman.conf -> IgnorePkg = <most needed pkgs, maybe even kernel>
3. extend my backupscript

The irony is, If I wouldn't have Win2k on my second latop ("playstation"), I would been fucked up... how should I got help over IRC and BBS?

That reminds me to install again ircII, lynx etc. better have a cmdline tool for every important GUI-App....cause you never know...

Well, I think that everyone, incl. me, would like to see Arch as successful as Gentoo or any other bigger dristri. So what can we do to precome such a desaster again?

I mean, no one can use Arch in real production stage as server for several services online if one update fucks up everthing.... Then your customers will get you on the phone, loose trust in your skills etc.

Maybe we should have beside current and extra somtehing like current_conservative and extra_conservative? For those who want to be less bleeding after all? I would be much more work to maintain...

Marian

Mr Green · 2006-02-21 12:48:05

I have no problem with initrd it works ...

udev well its just a case of removing hotplug hal dbus pmount ivman etc

modules loaded well thats down to me no one else

Xorg .... not going as well as I thought its laid out ok wiki news etc .,,, just going to be a pain to set up again

but thats half the fun breaking stuff

Custom kernels.... if you know what you are doing fine never saw any point to it to gain a nano (get it!) second more speed (just update yer hardware!)

Arch is the best distro in the world, take the rough with the smooth & be 8)

my2c

Cotton · 2006-02-21 13:02:21

iphitus wrote:

...
Arch is meant to be on the bleeding edge...
These things needed to happen, there isnt any avoiding them. Xorg7 modular sat in testing for ages. Maybe you should have tested it. Whining doesnt help. Filing bugs and patches does.
...
iphitus

Don't have any problem with the bleeding edge, its just frustrating for people to have to spend hours getting their OS back to where it was that morning - thats what other distros are for

It would have been nice to have some sort of warning like "upgrade xorg at your peril - will most likely break and you can keep the pieces", rather than letting people assume that it was safe to do so just because it was now in current.

Still its a godsend for all those who complain there's nothing to fix in ARCH

Arch Linux

#1 2006-02-20 20:50:31

The biggest breaker of Arch Linux, ever...

#2 2006-02-20 20:52:31

Re: The biggest breaker of Arch Linux, ever...

#3 2006-02-20 21:00:09

Re: The biggest breaker of Arch Linux, ever...

#4 2006-02-20 21:02:00

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#5 2006-02-20 21:03:23

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#6 2006-02-20 21:04:34

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#7 2006-02-20 21:09:58

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#8 2006-02-20 21:12:48

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#9 2006-02-20 21:24:32

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#10 2006-02-20 23:11:16

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#11 2006-02-20 23:37:27

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#12 2006-02-20 23:54:21

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#13 2006-02-20 23:55:56

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#14 2006-02-21 00:34:05

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#15 2006-02-21 01:57:04

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#16 2006-02-21 04:00:13

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#17 2006-02-21 04:15:25

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#18 2006-02-21 04:44:51

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#19 2006-02-21 05:00:03

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#20 2006-02-21 05:06:29

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#21 2006-02-21 06:58:03

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#22 2006-02-21 11:54:21

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#23 2006-02-21 12:37:16

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#24 2006-02-21 12:48:05

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#25 2006-02-21 13:02:21

Re: The biggest breaker of Arch Linux, ever...

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