On 29/07/16 09:11, Yasha Karant wrote:
On 07/28/2016 02:57 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
On 07/28/2016 01:44 PM, Yasha Karant wrote:
I was updating an application on my SL7.1 laptop workstation, not
using a terminal screen yum but the GUI interface that automagically
appears after "clicking" on the downloaded RPM in the web browser
download window. Unfortunately, the ISP network failed during the
update (that evidently downloaded other RPMs required). The update
did not appear to be re-entrant recoverable. ...
yum-complete-transaction may have saved you a whole lot of work. It's
in the 'yum-utils' package and it attempts to re-enter and complete
the yum transaction. The yum database is semi-atomic and has a
transactional characteristic.
Yum and the GUI updaters are all supposed to download everything
before updating anything, but depending upon exactly which RPM
installer you were using it may have behaved differently.
I did try that from a scrolling screen, but to no avail -- something may
have broken yum for all I know. I did look at the logs in /var but
found no smoking gun(s). There were suggested hints displayed by yum
when I invoked it on the scrolling screen (the GUI had been absolutely
silent -- just an activity indicator that halted momentarily then
continued ad naseum that made me suspicious something was amiss -- and
only after GUI failure did I continue with the scrolling screen method
-- a different F key screen than the one with Xwindows). The 802.11
connection was not lost, but DNS, etc., was -- a web browser could not
get out. It is possible that one of the automagic updates needed to
satisfy the update of the package upon which I was updating pulled in
some network utility/resource update and that froze the Internet
Protocol Suite stack -- but the 802.11 MAC was fine. It definitely
smashed Xwindows.
What I found most annoying was with the SL7.2 ISO 4 Gbyte installation
DVD in the drive, yum upgrade did find it and did claim to succeed --
but the machine would not boot. Only a fresh install smashing
(formatting) the boot, /, /usr, and swap partitions allowed it to
complete and boot. Also, the fact that the current 7.2 MATE evidently
has issues with a home directory that worked with a 7.1 MATE (7.2
current MATE caja failed) was not pleasing; I still have the previous
home directory and can attempt to find which .<foo> file(s) contained
the offending configuration(s).
In any event, I do now have a working 7.2 laptop and am not looking
forward to 7.3 unless the yum upgrade path works, or the GUI booted
installer also has an update "button" that will not smash any existing
directories (except for swap that only has ephemeral data/files as I
understand things). I understand that 8 will be a fresh install of all
of the systems partitions.
A question: does yumex (that is working and installed on this system)
allow for easy control of which "installed" repositories are used?
Yes. Install them, eg from a repo rpm, in /etc/yum.repos.d/
Select the 'Repositories' view, either from 'View' or from the third
icon on the LeftHandSide.
Right-click options include 'Enable/Disable permanently.' That will
also affect yum.cron jobs. IIUC ticks(UK)/checks(US) from a single
left-click affect only the current yumex session.
Other screens can display yum history, dependencies, package changesets,
package filelists, ...
In general, tool tips will identify what an icon does and anything
important asks for confirmation. Describing procedures takes up much
more space than quoting the correct command-line but I find the GUI
quite friendly. Unleash your inner 10-year-old! :-)
A second question: if I want to go from "old" partitions to LVM
layouts, do I need two LVM "parts" on a drive so that /home /usr/local
/opt and the like do not have to be smashed upon a full install? At
some point I shall need to install a hard drive and use LVM rather than
the "old" partition scheme.
Yasha Karant
