[SOLVED]Problem Replacing qtchooser with qt5, and inkscape...

bklee · 2016-11-02 14:14:52

The following problem regards use of inskcape graphics program in plasma 5 desktop environment, after deprecation of qtchooser along the update timeline.

Replacing qtchooser with qt5-base caused my system desktop environment to crash during system update. On reboot, login page was available, but login led to the riddle message box: "Can you call qdbus?" Removing qtchooser changed link to qdbus, and I could hack/fix this by adding a manual link. Though ultimately, I removed the link and updated qt to most current version, which seems to take care of qdbus linking automatically.

Yet I have a new problem with the qt4 metadata, and I can't get around it by manual replacement of the package:

   
[bklee@knechtmenge ManualPacman]$ sudo pacman -U qt4-4.8.7-9-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz 
loading packages...
warning: downgrading package qt4 (4.8.7-10 => 4.8.7-9)
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/qt4-4.8.7-10/desc: No such file or directory
warning: could not fully load metadata for package qt4-4.8.7-10
error: failed to prepare transaction (invalid or corrupted package)

Possibly the system update crash interupted some files. Does this mean that I need to make changes to pacman as root? Is there anyway to fix this problem without resorting to root control?

Furthermore on the latest system update there is a conflict with "kactivitymanagerd"

[bklee@knechtmenge ManualPacman]$ sudo pacman -S kactivitymanagerd
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/qt4-4.8.7-10/desc: No such file or directory

Packages (1) kactivitymanagerd-5.8.3-1

Total Installed Size:  0.62 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] Y
(1/1) checking keys in keyring                             [###############################] 100%
(1/1) checking package integrity                           [###############################] 100%
(1/1) loading package files                                [###############################] 100%
(1/1) checking for file conflicts                          [###############################] 100%
error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files)
kactivitymanagerd: /usr/bin/kactivitymanagerd exists in filesystem
kactivitymanagerd: /usr/lib/libkactivitymanagerd_plugin.so exists in filesystem
...
...
kactivitymanagerd: /usr/share/locale/zh_TW/LC_MESSAGES/kactivities5.mo exists in filesystem
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.

I don't know if this is a consequence of the qt4 problem, but it seems plausible.

Ultimately, I am just trying to open inkscape and put some labels onto a figure. I can't be sure the problem preventing inkscape from launching has to do with this conflict, but again it seems plausible.

I am embarassed to say that I did lapse on updating for a while, and worried that this problem could ultimately require re-installation. In this case I'm interested to find out how much can be done while leaving files and filesystem in-tact.

Thanks,

Brad

Last edited by bklee (2016-11-05 18:37:03)

WorMzy · 2016-11-02 15:51:37

I take it you had set qtchooser to use qt4 by default, instead of qt5? I'm not sure whether that would have caused all the side effects you described, but by replacing qtchooser with qt5-base, all the common, non-versioned qt binaries in /usr/bin (including qdbus) should be the qt5 variants. What symlink are you creating?

Regarding your code-blocked problems, it looks like you have suffered some filesystem corruption, which has damaged pacman's package database. This may have been a result of the crash you experienced. You will need root rights to fix the problem, but first I would run a filesystem check on your filesystems to make sure they are not any further damaged. Once you are sure the filesystems are healthy, you will need to repair pacman's database.

If this was my system, I would do the following:

1) fix the database entry for qt4, then check the package's files are not damaged:

# rm -r /var/lib/pacman/local/qt4-4.8.7-10/
# pacman -U --dbonly /var/cache/pacman/pkg/qt4-4.8.7-10-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
# pacman -Qkk qt4

2) Fix the database entry for kactivitymanagerd:
a) check what owns /usr/bin/kactivitymanagerd (using 'pacman -Qo')
b-i) If nothing owns it, reinstall the kactivitymanagerd package using pacman's --force flag.
OR
b-ii) if something does own it (e.g. an AUR package), decide whether to update the owning package, or replace it with kactivitymanagerd.

3) Make sure the system is up-to-date:

# pacman -Syu

4) Fix any other problems which come to light during the upgrade.

Whether this fixes your inkscape problem, I have no idea. You will need to tell us why inkscape isn't working. i.e. what error do you get when launching it from a terminal, if any?

bklee · 2016-11-02 17:40:06

I followed your instructions and everything seemed to work perfectly except that "mtree" files were missing from the pacman library. I went through successful system update, then reboot and now the loader doesn't engage. I'm stuck with a screen that says: Device /dev/sda2 not found. Skipping fsck... recovery shell.. can't access tty; job control off. and then "rootfs" terminal. Can't even type anything on the rootfs terminal, keystrokes don't register.

Looks like I'm in some serious trouble now. I'm sure I'll fix it eventually, but any suggestions to speed me up are welcome.

Brad

Edit [SOLVED]: Seems to be a "break it more and then fix it situation", where it was ultimately helpful to have a system-wide crash. I booted off install media, created a back up of all data files, and proceeded to play around on the boot partition. Strange that no changes to various conf. files produced any resurrection; though, all partuuid's and uuid's were painstakingly verified. So the boot system is not exactly KISS to me, especially because it seems like finding root partition is really a first priority, should just be an address lookup. If the addresses are all correct, then the error message should be something else. Reading various threads it seems like "cannot find root" is used as a catch-all when the kernel has a critical error. Is this the case? I'm not deep enough to know for sure.

Assuming that the problem was critical failure of linux itself, I used the usb boot to pacstrap with some risk assumed. Everything turned out fine, leaving only the problem of cleaning up the mess from the initial crash. Many ancillary library files were corrupted and could not be update by pacman, which was returning "file exists in filesystem" errors. Using "pkgfile", I went one-by-one through corrupted libraries and updated all of these using option "--force". Finally, this fixed inkscape, so we are back in business!

Arch and user community are best in the world!

Thanks again,

Brad

Last edited by bklee (2016-11-05 18:58:20)

Arch Linux

#1 2016-11-02 14:14:52

[SOLVED]Problem Replacing qtchooser with qt5, and inkscape...

#2 2016-11-02 15:51:37

Re: [SOLVED]Problem Replacing qtchooser with qt5, and inkscape...

#3 2016-11-02 17:40:06

Re: [SOLVED]Problem Replacing qtchooser with qt5, and inkscape...

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