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master_b - 01.06.2006, 03:30 Uhr
Titel: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed - again

Just updated this AM and now system wont finish booting - gets to loading kdm and then hangs trying to load(?) xdm.

Obviously I can access everything via LiveCD but what file(s) need editing this time?

Had similar problem with Xorg some time ago but have forgotten what was the "fix"

Thanks

master_b

h2 - 01.06.2006, 04:31 Uhr
Titel: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed - again

see if this thread helps:
http://kanotix.com/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t-18581.html
I'm getting more suspicious that many dist-upgrade failures are due to incomplete dist-upgrades of one type or another. That's the ones when there is no known issue.

That's also assuming a fairly standard system, kde, not some other desktop manager.

And assuming not 64 bit.

the last xorg fix was a one time fix, so if you already applied that to this install that's not the issue.

2radical - 01.06.2006, 04:36 Uhr
Titel: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed - again

I'm leaning towards the position of not DU-ing when things are hunky-dory the way they are. I've had too many experiences where doing so has trashed a working system. I think I'll just let things go for a while I do it later when all the freak-outs have subsided, & sid is relatively safe (if there is such a thing) I'd rather not spend more time on a live-cd trying to correct things than using a working system, if you know what I mean.

DeepDayze - 01.06.2006, 04:58 Uhr
Titel: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed - again

We've already had several freak-outs already:

for starters
1) KDE 3.4 to 3.5
2) Compiler changes from gcc 3.x to 4
3) Xorg 6.8/6.9 to 7.0

stryder - 01.06.2006, 05:03 Uhr
Titel: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed - again

That's a much wiser position - DU only when things have settled. I have 2 systems that I upgrade regularly and alternately from week to week. That way I have a working system available at all times. And, I have a third that I don't upgrade for around 1 year, just as a failsafe. All these take up 3 5GB partitions - a small price for being able to experiment without work being interrupted.

h2 - 01.06.2006, 05:54 Uhr
Titel: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed - again

just back up the root directory partition if in doubt.

then restore if it fails, takes about 30-40 minutes total, plus you have a backup.

But different ways will work for different people, I worry more about waiting too long and then not being able to upgrade safely, though I haven't seen that issue yet.

My goal is to be running 2005-4 totally upto date for as long as possible, then mabye turning off debian sid at some point and just using testing from then on. I'll see how it goes, so far so good, every install I have works and is upgraded, I made a script to carry me over the bumps of xorg 7 and hal/udev, but otherwise the fixes are relatively trivial so far.

But I do do the full backup on my main work box now just in case, I can't afford failure, and it's a good excuse to do a backup anyway, I was always bad about that.

I would like to start trying to figure out the common thread that ties failed upgrades together, that would be useful. It's not hardware specific since I've done this on different platforms now, all with the same end results, successful upgrade as long as tweaks are applied and upgrade is done successfully.

Things I've noted: forget 64 bit for at least a year if you want to dist-upgrade I suspect
different desktop managers may or may not cause issues if it's the main one.
incomplete upgrades stopped by dpkg errors are not completed
fixes are not applied

It takes some work to keep current, that's not really a practical thing long term, but it is educational, and with good backups it really doesn't matter that much when something goes bad, just restore and wait for sid to stabilize, then upgrade.

Plus of course, always check the news and irc for problems before starting if you haven't done one for a while, it's hard to keep up.

master_b - 01.06.2006, 06:16 Uhr
Titel: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed - again

Thanks for replies guys.

Have temporarily "solved" problem by booting Kanotix 2006 Easter rc2 live cd and saving my config to a persistent home.

Then installed Opera 9 beta via Klik and copied accross my existing Opera bookmarks, my Firefox bookmarks and my Thunderbird cofig files and saved my config again.

Tried to install Pan via Klik but it won't run.

Only other problems with this setup are that there are no drivers for my old b/w canon printer ( a problem with the orig files on Easter rc2) and my Network Card settings (DHCP on boot) don't save to my config though they should.

At least I can access the Web and Email while I try to fix my HD install.

Will post further as (if) problem(s) are solved.

Bill

michael7 - 01.06.2006, 13:26 Uhr
Titel:

h2 wrote:

Zitat:

I made a script to carry me over the bumps of xorg 7 and hal/udev

Is this something that you would be willing to share?

I too have been thinking about "testing". I love Kanotix but there is a price to be paid for using sid. Perhaps when the final version of 2006 arrives, I'll change my /etc/apt/sources.list file. There was a favorable review of "etch" on NewsForge two days ago.
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/05/25/146242

By the way, having the /home directory on a separate partition has saved me much anguish.

drb - 01.06.2006, 14:43 Uhr
Titel:

Bill,

I didn't find anything to d-u today and it's been some time since an xorg update. What version of xorg7 did you have the problem with?

drb

h2 - 01.06.2006, 20:29 Uhr
Titel:

michael7, this is the script homepage:

http://techpatterns.com/forums/about736.html

Please note that most of its features are for bringing 2005-4 and cebit to current status.

The script will not correct user errors like entering 'y' to use new config files during dist-upgrade. Current options are to retain your configs in all cases except fonts, which most users won't see unless upgrading from earlier versions, not easter. Always select 'n' with the exception of the font.conf option.

I just added the /etc/apt/preferences line feed add fix, and the multicd fix, version 1.2.0 has them. Please note: I have not tested this script on easter. You should not need the xorg option on easter kanotix however.

I'll test it later today, make sure you use 1.2.0 of the script. It also has improved du handling options, now you can do install -f, dist-upgrade again, continue, or exit script if you think there is a problem.

As always, if you depend on your install and have not dist-upgraded in a while, please do a full backup using rdiff-backup to another partition or drive. The faqs have a backup item that explains the procedure.

I wrote an rdiff-backup script with all the required exclusions as a separate file and so on but since it's specific to my setup it won't do people much good to use it.

kenyee - 01.06.2006, 20:57 Uhr
Titel:

h2:
Do you use rdiff-backup to back up your root directory?
Curious how you do it...I've been trying to choose between rdiff-backup, dirvish, and duplicity. TrueImage doesn't seem to work that well w/ LVM partitions and I think I only need it for my boot partition...

gardyloo - 01.06.2006, 21:59 Uhr
Titel: backing up root

Hi, kenyee,

I use rdiff-backup to backup everthing on a couple of different computers (this one to both an external usb drive, and over the net to a SUSE box). It's worked nearly flawlessly for me so far (notwithstanding the fact that the rdiff-backup-statistics command doesn't seem to be working on the newest release, apparently due to it relying on some latest python release, which hasn't yet been installed here).
When I want to back up my entire root directory (including my /home directory, but excluding a few directories living in /home), I just issue (as root, so I have write priveleges on the external usb drive) the following command (in a script in my home directory, as I'm lazy and don't want to write the whole thing every time):

Code:

#!/bin/sh

rdiff-backup --exclude '/tmp/*' --exclude '/proc/*' --exclude '/sys/*' --exclude '/media/*/*' --exclude '/home/gardyloo/fob/*' --exclude '/home/gardyloo/Desktop/vids/*' / /media/sda2/rdiff-backups/root-backup

I have a very similar (only the destination directory is on another machine) script if I want to back up off-site.

This was taken almost verbatim from the excellent little tutorial in the wiki about rdiff-backup. Also, if you google for "rdiff-backup examples" it'll take you to the homepage of rdiff-backup and give lots of very useful examples of other things you can do.
There are some web-based frontends out there, too, but I've never really got them to work. I think, too, that "keep" is a KDE frontend, but, frankly, the command line is so easy on this one that I just use that.

If anyone ends up using Dirvish, please let me know. I've been following their mailing list lately, and it looks like a very nice tool. So far, though, I'm totally happy with rdiff-backup, especially after the pain of mondo.

h2 - 01.06.2006, 22:51 Uhr
Titel: RE: backing up root

I tested my xorg7-h2.sh upgrade script on a 2005-4 install, and it seems to be working fine. Massive du on an older install, no issues. That one was xorg 7.0.14 to xorg 7.0.20, so I didn't need to use the update xorg parts, but it doesn't matter if you do if you've already done it.

kenyee, yes, I do, pretty much same way as above, except I use an exclude list for the directories:

:: exclude list:

Zitat:

/tmp/*
/proc/*
/sys/*
/home/*
/media/*/*

There's a limit of how many excludes you can put in the actual command line, I think it was 5 or something, so using a list is easier.

saved as excludes.txt

then

rdiff-backup --exclude-globbing-filelist /home/username/bin/scripts/excludes.txt / /media/sdd1/bu-root

NOTE: this assumes your /home is on another partition of course.

michael7 - 01.06.2006, 23:28 Uhr
Titel: Thank you, h2

h2,

That is a great piece of work. Thank you for sharing with us. I enjoy your posts because you always teach me something.

michael

markb - 02.06.2006, 00:01 Uhr
Titel: Re: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed - ag

h2 hat folgendes geschrieben::

My goal is to be running 2005-4 totally upto date for as long as possible, then mabye turning off debian sid at some point and just using testing from then on.

Can I ask how to do this? Is it as easy as swapping the Pin-Priority on the unstable and testing releases in the /etc/apt/preferences file? I starting to think I should upgrade against the testing distribution but I would still like the ability to manually upgrade a specific package from unstable (but not X or KDE!)

h2 - 02.06.2006, 00:09 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed

I haven't tried it yet, and I would strongly recommend not trying it on your main install.

All I would do is comment out the sid stuff in /etc/apt/sources.list

to manually upgrade specific packages you'd just uncomment out those lines for that update.

But you'd always have to test each upgrade carefully to make sure the sid package didn't try to pull in all of kde or xorg or whatever.

I'll test it one of these days, but not yet, too much stuff is happening with kde and xorg to settle down yet I think.

I'm thinking a while after kde 4 comes out and is in testing maybe.

h2 - 02.06.2006, 06:08 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed

For anyone who has used the script in the past, I changed the name, so you'd need to get the new version, it's called du-fixes-h2.sh

It also now checks for updates of itself before proceeding. Make sure it's version 1.5 or greater for that feature, and the latest du fixes.

You can get it here. I've tested it a few times with the latest fixes and everything had dist-upgraded fine.
http://techpatterns.com/forums/about736.html

kenyee - 02.06.2006, 16:53 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed

thanks gardyloo and h2 for your rdiff-backup exclusions list Smilie

I looked at duplicity again (it clearly says it's not stable Smilie

and dirvish looks more painful than it's worth, so I'll probably just use rdiff-backup.

gardyloo: you said you used an external usb drive and I do the same. Is yours formatted w/ NTFS like mine is? Or did you put a Linux filesystem on it? I'm wondering if rdiff-backup works if you put the backup files on a non-Linux filesystem (whether it'll maintain the security attributes of the files, etc. which is why I've been using tar up to this point)...

h2 - 02.06.2006, 19:23 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed

you can't write to ntfs from linux safely.

You can't make files > 4 gig in fat32, so for dependable backup, use ext3 with a windows ext2 driver

this one is well regarded:
http://www.fs-driver.org/

Note, from the faqs on that site, if you try using an external drive with more than one partition you will probably run into errors.

Another very cheap and easy way to go is to just get a removable harddrive tray and just mount and unmount that.

I'm using firewire currently, but as soon as I get around to it I'll switch to a removable internal harddrive, that's faster, and more reliable long term.

gardyloo - 02.06.2006, 20:14 Uhr
Titel:

Hi, Kenyee,

Zitat:

gardyloo: you said you used an external usb drive and I do the same. Is yours formatted w/ NTFS like mine is? Or did you put a Linux filesystem on it? I'm wondering if rdiff-backup works if you put the backup files on a non-Linux filesystem (whether it'll maintain the security attributes of the files, etc. which is why I've been using tar up to this point)...

My external USB drive has several ext3 partitions on it, as h2 said. I've successfully backed up ext2, ext3, and reiserfs file systems to the ext3-formatted partitions on this drive (and on another over a LAN). I could try backing up to an NTFS partition just for grins, but I'm a little hesitant. Most sites claim that NTFS can't be written to successfully from linux; a few claim that it's really no problem, and that the problems are overstated and have been dealt with for years. I'm not entirely sure who to believe, but I'd rather err on the safe side, and back up consistently to something I'm pretty sure will work, and leave backing up to an NTFS partition for experimentation. If you need to resize your NTFS, or put another filesystem on that external USB drive, and need an open-source program to do it, I'd use GParted. Their latest livecd version seems a little flaky with xwindowing (I usually have to reboot a couple of times and end up using the lowest requirements -- xvesa, which is fine for a quick partition change), but is getting better all the time, and things like copying and moving partitions are getting more and more supported by that project.

I've also tried backing up an NTFS filesystem onto an ext3 one, using rdiff-backup running under Cygwin in WindowsXP. That invariably crashes when getting to system files which are being used by Windows, but it successfully backs up the data which resides on the XP partitions. I haven't yet tried backing up an NTFS filesystem from a running linux system (as from a dual-boot into Kanotix, or from the liveCD). It might work all right, but links might be screwed up. I think that the rdiff-backup developers are working on such things, but am not entirely sure what the status is.

In short, I haven't tried doing what you propose. If you get it to work, great! Let us know! But compatibility between the *nix filesystems and NTFS is really lacking, and I'm wary of losing my important files to something silly. I'd do what h2 says, and at the very least, create an ext3 system on which to house your backups. It's worked for me.

Regards,
gardyloo

P.S. Not that anyone needs such advice, but my external drive is just a regular SATA hard drive (a Seagate, I think), as might go in a desktop, which is shoved into a cheapo KingWin hdd enclosure. I've been very happy with its size and capabilities. It seems much less flaky than the pre-made external drives from, say, Maxtor (which I've used a lot, too), and MUCH less expensive. Those "pre-housed" drives have one advantage: they usually come with Retrospect, which is useful for Windows systems; they also sometimes come with USB AND firewire connections. But I'm happy with my rdiff-backup!

kenyee - 02.06.2006, 23:50 Uhr
Titel:

Thanks, guys. I was afraid of that. I think I'll tar/gzip the rdiff-backup directory and then save off the tar file by sharing it to my Windows machine. That external drive contains Acronis TrueImage images as well, so I can't just switch it to ext3...repartitioning using Partition Magic might be ok though...

2radical - 03.06.2006, 02:24 Uhr
Titel:

As often as I have stuffed MY installation, I'm going to purchase a backup drive for safety's sake. I just posted in the hardware section of the forum regarding this, which was very helpful. I'm glad to hear that I can put multiple partitions on it without problems (other than my ignorance about doing so). But I need to get into the habit of backing up consistently, because when screw-ups occur as they invariably do, I spend a crazy amount of time correcting things from a live-cd, which is a major pain in the *** & makes my wife look at me weird like "you did it AGAIN, eh?" .

h2: said:

Zitat:

Another very cheap and easy way to go is to just get a removable harddrive tray and just mount and unmount that.

And I have to ask: What is a removable HD tray? How is it connected? Sorry for my ignorance, kurt

kenyee - 03.06.2006, 03:27 Uhr
Titel:

2radical: something like this: http://www.granitedigital.com/catalog/p ... wapbay.htm
Google for "IDE hotswap"

h2 - 03.06.2006, 19:24 Uhr
Titel:

No, don't use firewire, it's unreliable for large data transfers, use a real ide or sata tray, like cru dataport v [that's at nerds.net]. I use a firewire drive, in a full sized external enclosure, and it sucks. I did a lot of research on this stuff for a client's job, and if you are going to chose one option, firewire external or internal removable drive trays, ide or sata, chose the drive tray option, especially the sata drive tray option. The cost of getting the frame/carrier + sata drive will be about the same as buying a junk all in one preassembled one like maxtor or western digital sell.

cru is the best, it's 10 times better than the cheap junk that other companies put out for about 1/2 the price, that cheap stuff always breaks, has data transfer errrors, fans die, whatever.

SATA is a better choice for the tray and hard drive because sata is truly hotswappable, your results will vary with ide, although linux is much more robust handling mount/unmount operations than windows.

Since the actual drive tray pulls out after you unmount the drive, you can jsut get more trays for each hard drive, that lets you have backup drives, test drives, extra data drives, whatever you want.

And if you mount the drives by label, not by /dev/hda or whatever, linux will know what to do with each drive in each tray.

For maximum flexibility, get this one:
http://www.thenerds.net/index.php?page= ... 1155000000
shop around, you can usually get about 1/2 the price at online parts stores

<added> Found the full price/inventory list, at the nerds.net. poorly designed website, hard to find stuff, but good prices.

slh - 03.06.2006, 20:14 Uhr
Titel:

I recommend against parallel ATA frames, the whole protocol is not hot swappable and you might seriously damage your computer by doing so. USB-/ firewire is not that reliable as it should be, but still a whole lot better than swapping p-ata devices (regardless how).

S-ATA on the other hand might be an interesting option, not only does it support hot swapping natively (you have to umount of course), it also doesn't loose performance to the pci - USB/ firewire bidge (external S-ATA enclosures are slowly appearing in the wild).

h2 - 03.06.2006, 20:30 Uhr
Titel:

yes, hot swapping ide is quite entertaining, it requires a special controller card if mobo doesn't handle it. But I'm glad you mentioned that, it's an important thing to understand, you can't hotswap standard ide in most mobos.

There's no issue at all with the ide trays if you turn them on before boot however, and turn them off after shutdown. That's with standard mobo ide connections.

However, if you want the best of both worlds, you can get the cru sata drive enclosure, then get the cru sata+ide tray, that converts ide to sata, which will work around the issue, since it's a sata connection.

And, the sad truth is, having just priced it, you're better off going sata all the way, since you can buy a new sata 160 gig drive for about $70, give or take a few dollars.

But long term, might as well just go with sata, it's faster anyway. And ide hard drives are going away now.

Zitat:

it also doesn't loose performance to the pci - USB/ firewire bidge (external S-ATA enclosures are slowly appearing in the wild).

And boy, do they lose performance, let me tell you, transfer rates if sata is also running on pci bus, which older sata does, to firewire drive, or any pci card mounted drive, plummets. New sata, and all ide, does not have this issue as far as I know.

Those external sata enclosures, by the way, so far as I've seen only support pci-e mobos, but that's a great option if you have a new mobo, but still not cheap, those will drop in price. But will require a pci-e sata controller card in any case, same pci problem. The trays are the cleanest solution I know of.

2radical - 03.06.2006, 21:11 Uhr
Titel:

My Kanotix is currently installed on an 40G ATA Western Digital.
At newegg.com I can buy this SATA HD: HITACHI Deskstar 7K80 HDS728080PLA380(0A30356) 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive for $38.99,
or an ATA HD:
Western Digital Caviar WD400BB 40GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive for $41.99.

The Hitachi SATA drive is double the capacity & cheaper, so that looks like it might be the best choice. I don't know why I would need to remove a drive so the cru dataport v link that h2 provided may be overkill for my backup purposes. I just want to have something I can fall back on in case I bork my current install. That way I'll feel more comfortable about DU-ing and other experimenting once I learn how to properly backup & restore. Would installing an internal HD & connecting it with a USB cable do this? Again, I apologize for my ignorance. Thanks, Kurt

kenyee - 03.06.2006, 21:19 Uhr
Titel:

For external usb/firewire enclosures, the best are MacAlly's:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... amp;Go.y=0
I had a cheapy plasticky one before that and it was slow and croaked within a year (doing only monthly backups).

I've transferred a lot of data on firewire w/o problems (USB 2.0, despite being theoretically faster, has so much overhead that Firewire400 is muchhhhh faster for backups. Firewire800 is nearly as fast as an IDE connection if you have a Firewire800 port on your system). That said, if you have an eSATA port on your computer, or can plug in a tray w/ a SATA drive, that's full speed and low overhead.

stryder - 04.06.2006, 03:42 Uhr
Titel:

Kurt, everyone is talking about a removable drive option. From what you say, your needs are much simpler - you just need to add another hard drive to your computer. If your motherboard can take SATA, then get the SATA. If it is an older machine, like 3 or 4 years old, chances are it cannot. In that case, get an ordinary ATA IDE drive. I'm sure there are cheaper ones than the one you found. If you want SATA and connect via USB, then you need to buy an additional enclosure that can accept the drive you buy, and have a USB connection. Booting off the USB drive can sometimes be problematic, I think. Alternatively you can transfer your data to the USB drive, carve out another partition on your main drive and use that as your alternative system.

I think there are also PCI cards that allow you to connect SATA directly, which might be a better option. I could be wrong... I don't use SATA.

2radical - 04.06.2006, 05:26 Uhr
Titel:

stryder: Thanks for the reply--that answers my questions. My computer is less that 3 yrs old & I have 3 more USB slots avaliable to use. I won't be booting off of the drive, but just using it as a storage medium. I also have a 9G partition that's empty & reiser formatted. As far as transfering data goes, could I also just use the cp command to move data there? Having another HD would have some advantages though I think. Thanks again.

stryder - 04.06.2006, 07:20 Uhr
Titel:

As long as the partition/drive is mounted properly you can cp anything anywhere, especially as root. In fact if in livecd you mount your main partition (say hda1) and your 9gig partition, say hda2 to /hda1 and /hda2, then (as root or sudo) cp -a /hda1/* /hda2 should transfer your whole system over. Then you add some entries to your menu.lst to have a new pointer to your hda2 system, comment out initrd, and you have 2 systems. It's that simple.

2radical - 04.06.2006, 08:48 Uhr
Titel:

Wow, thanks alot for that information. That certainly is simpler than some other things I've been reading. I'm printing that out to add to my notebook of how-to's. I don't trust my memory as much as I used to.

markb - 04.06.2006, 11:19 Uhr
Titel:

stryder hat folgendes geschrieben::

.. then (as root or sudo) cp -a /hda1/* /hda2 should transfer your whole system over. ...

Actually you should use "cp -ax /media/hda1/* /media/hda2/". The -x is important as it stops other file systems such as /proc/, /media/*/*, etc being copied. This simple procedure does work as I have used it to move my existing installation to new partitions and new disks.

stryder - 04.06.2006, 11:21 Uhr
Titel:

Oh, I forgot to mention, before you boot your second system you need to edit /etc/fstab (in your second system, ie /hda2/etc/fstab) using a text editor as root and change the root mount. For example, you should change

/dev/hda1 (assuming this is your main system partition) / reiserfs defaults etc...

to

/dev/hda2 / reiserfs defaults etc...

and if you had /dev/hda2 mounted elsewhere then that will have to be commented out.

stryder - 04.06.2006, 11:29 Uhr
Titel:

markb hat folgendes geschrieben::

Ah, that's useful. Smilie

I normally copy over systems that I am NOT booted in (which was why I said "in livecd") so that I don't copy contents of other mounted partitions accidentally. That should take care of /proc/ right?

h2 - 04.06.2006, 20:00 Uhr
Titel:

just to be clear, while cp I assume will work as long as you don't have mounted stuff, and of course, if you do it from another partition or the livecd, it should work fine [although I don't know about filepermissions and all that being maintained], the key difference between cp, which is a blanket approach, and rdiff-backup, is that rdiff-backup will backup intelligently, first time run, it backup up everything, next time it backup up only files that have been changed. So backups are much faster the more often you do them.

For stuff like dist-upgrades, this is worth thinking about. There are many other features of real backup programs, no matter which one you use, that makes them highly preferred, although it's hard to argue with the sheer simplicity of cp, lol.

The removable hard drive tray might sound complicated if you've never used it, but it's not. It's actually the simplest removable backup solution you can use in my opinion, and by far the fastest, most stable, and most reliable.

And with prices like > 50 for a hard drive, and about $50 for a sata tray plus container, that's the same or less as most usb or firewire units.

But of course, usb and firewire has the advantage of being portable to other machines, which is a good thing as well.

2radical - 04.06.2006, 23:13 Uhr
Titel:

Am I correct in assuming using rdiff-backup you should still add entries to the /boot/grub/menu.lst & edit /etc/fstab?

ironwalker - 05.06.2006, 01:20 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed

h2,
Excellent work on the script.

I have not been around in a bit and forgot about holding off on the dist-upgrade a few months back when told too and lost graphics.
I waited a little longer....today,to try and fix.I used your script...fixed some pakages that were holding me up/back and got graphics.There were something like well over 900 pakages that needed upgradeing not to mention the kernel was way outdated.This is a 2005.4 install.
Anyway,after proceeding on with your script,I believe it was the xorg7-fixup part that I had lost graphics again.

errors are;
cannot locate file for xorg-driver-fglrx,pakage may need to be fix manually...whatever that means.
Also trying different things I got fglrx-driver needs reinstall but no archive found....that landed me the previous error.I believe I got that on graphics driver install.
Radeon grphics is what I need.

I wish I left all alone when I got the gui back and was at my desktop,but I went back to init 3 and proceeded on with the script.

I know its not borked beyond recognition,I just need some guidence.

Since I have not been around for quite some time I will spend the night looking back through months of threads related.

Thanks.

h2 - 05.06.2006, 03:26 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed

Ironwalker, I don't use radeon stuff following the good advice I got here, so testing the radeon parts of those scripts is their weak point. I added a note to that affect on the script to alert users that they are on their own so to speak if they are using radeon.

However, I checked irc:

"fglrx" is (#1) update-scripts-kanotix.sh : [Alt] + [Ctrl] + [F1] & login as root ; install-fglrx-debian.sh, and (#2) use -r option to remove modelines while installing (to fix out of sync errors)

Translation: go into init 3 as root; run this command: install-fglrx-debian.sh -r

Doesn't seem to have many bad issues, just do that and see if it fixes it.

Radeon has been consistently problematic for people, but I haven't followed that at all.

My guess is that yes it can be fixed, fairly easily.

I doubt it's the xorg stuff that broke it, that's just kano's initial xorg fix, plus reinstalling xorg parts to make sure they are there, that's all that happens.

If you got that error on the attempt to install the radeon graphics driver, the last step that is, it's probably using an out of date radeon installer, that script grabs the installer from kanotix.com, but now the installer comes standard in kanotix, but I'm not sure if it's will be installed by itself on 2005-4, I believe not.

I've tested this one on many different boxes, all either nvidia or neutral older cards/chipsets, and it works fine, but radeon is definitely a challenge. Luckily for you, kano uses radeon on his box so it's possible you can get some better quality help on that specific issue.

If you tried fglrx driver install and got the no archive found, it just means it's an out of date script I think.

Try to simply run this command: install-fglrx-debian.sh

directly, my suspicion is that the script that was in kanotix is slightly different, I checked, it is, but I don't know the differences.

Again, far more people had problems with radeon over the last months than with nvidia, and I haven't really followed the radeon stuff at all since I can't test it.

<added>I updated the script to now no longer use the version of fglrx install located on kanotix.com/files, but to use the local version, which wasn't present before, but now is.

<script update>Coming soon for those few people using the script: it will remember your selections and not repeat questions when you run the script next time, so you'll only have to answer each fix one time. Future versions of the script will retain the responses. With self updating script, that should make dist-upgrade slightly more safe for those people who don't feel like checking irc every day for new issues before doing du, or homepage of site. What can I say, I like scripting stuff, and shell scripting, though very limited, is fun.

h2 - 05.06.2006, 03:50 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed

2radical:

Zitat:

Am I correct in assuming using rdiff-backup you should still add entries to the /boot/grub/menu.lst & edit /etc/fstab?

I'm not clear on the question, do you mean is the backup drive added in /etc/fstab? It is if you want it to be, doesn't have to be since if you use externel firewire or usb drives, hal/udev handles the mounting for you.

But you could make it less hit and miss I guess by adding a label for that drive in /etc/fstab, have to look into that.

but I think that's not what you are asking.

Rdiff backup is just a backup program that backs up where you tell it to, it doesn't have anything to do with etc/fstab or grub, but now I see what you are asking, no, it's not a cp type thing, it's a true backup, not a copy of the partition.

the rdiff backup data is not an image of your system in any way at all, it's just data, files, etc, with meta files to let rdiff know what the latest versions of your stuff is. That's another feature by the way, rdiff doesn't overwrite changed files in itself, it adds them to itself, which means you can roll back to earlier backups or file versions if you want.

It's very clever. cp is simply creating a copy of your current partition's data, that's it. And in cp, if you switched partitions to boot, though I wouldn't do that personally, I'd just overwrite the failed install with the copied partition's data.

It just gets confusing having two version of the os on the box, it's easier to say, ok, hda2 is my main system, for example, and hda5 is the backup, cp, rdiff-backup, makes no difference. Then if you need to restore, just use the livecd and restore the hda5 to the hda2 [partitions just given as examples]. It's much less confusing that way.

However, make absolutely certain that your cp uses the right command line options on restore and on backup to maintain all file ownership and permissions. Otherwise you're essentially totally scr$wed when you try to restore.

rdiff does this automatically. which to use just depends on you, rdiff takes reading some instructions, mike sheppard has them in faqs, that works fine on standard restores etc. You write the backup script one time and use that for backups, no thinking, which I like. I don't mind thinking one time to do something, but I don't like to have to remember stuff that might end up destroying my box every time I do something as simple as a backup. I'm lazy that way.

ironwalker - 05.06.2006, 03:56 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed

Thank you.

I like that site you linked to as well....yours? *saved!*

Yeah,I never had a problem with ati before,well,nothing so bad as I needed to go nvidia.
Right now,like I said,I have been out of the loop for a bit and forgot quite a bit too so its some trial and error and some reading.I appreciate your reply and I will figure it out.Seems the only errors I get is...no drivers in xorg logs.
Apparantly,no modules for fglrx as well but was assumeing thats because the drivers didnt install.

Thanks,it has been a long time since I spent this many hours on kanotix. Winken

I will chalk that up to ignoreing my daily dist-upgrades and what-not.

For what it's worth,I got all those 900 or odd so pakages updated without a hitch. Sehr glücklich

I will fix tomorrow....thanks again.

ironwalker - 05.06.2006, 04:09 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed

Kind of stuck now....I know,its bedtime but I have to get past this.
Any apt-get dist-upgrade,remove,or install wants to remove xorg-driver-fglrx but it keeps erroring out even with -f with;

dpkg divert:rename involves overwriteing 'usr/lib/libGL.so.1' with different file 'usr/lib/fglrx/libGL.so.1.xlibmesa',not allowed.
dpkg: error processing xorg-driver-fglrx (--remove)

xorg-driver-fglrx partially installed
driver-fglrx not installed.
I was trying to remove the first to try the second but it wont remove.

h2 - 05.06.2006, 04:11 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed

why are you trying to remove them?

your driver needs to reinstalled, see above for corrected technique

ironwalker - 05.06.2006, 04:29 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed

Well,when one didnt work I tried the other....it didnt work either.Now I keep getting dependancy problems but I do not see any listed.Purging config files fail in the process of install-fglrx-debian.sh -r .
I cannot get the full errors but it fails...with -r or without.
I cant think right now so I have to rest a bit.I know its something stupid and simple.

dpkg: dependancy problems prevent configuration of fglrx-kernel-2.6.16.16-kanotix-1:
fglrx-kernel-2.6.16.16-kanotix-1 depends on fglrx driver (=8.25.18-1);however:
pakage fglrx driver is not installed.............................................(makes sense,install it,but it doesnt install.)
dependancy problems......leaveing unconfigured.

h2 - 05.06.2006, 07:13 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed

I'm not up on the fglrx stuff at all, there may be a special fix. Hopefully you are running a fairly standard install, kde, no gnome, and all that.

After watching the distupgrade game for the last 6 months, I decided that if I am using debian sid based distros, I am definitely not doing anything involving a lot of extra packages, like running gnome.

I'd say the top group of people I see with dist-upgrade failures, after the standard updated in kde, not init 3, didn't apply fixes, and that type of issue, is the ones with highly customized installations. Not surprising, of course.

To be clear, did you at any point remove or purge any stuff while trying to fix it? In other words, did you take extra steps that are not part of the normal apt procedure? That makes it very hard to diagnose if you did, unless you remember each thing you did. Also if you remember what was removed etc.

Rereading your error stuff though, it sounds to me like you might have just hit a bug in the kanotix kernel/fglrx installer. I don't know how many people here run radeon stuff, but it's not as many as nvidia, so the testing debugging isn't going to be as good, and radeon stuff isn't as well done in the first place from what people say. Kano is the main radeon tester from what I've gathered, so unless you run his exact setup, you might have issues, hard to say.

going nvidia was definitely the best move I made when I finally decided to go with linux for real, although I wish there were non proprietary drivers out there, or different chipsets I could use for my video cards, simple stuff, I don't game so I need nothing more than basic features.

h2 - 05.06.2006, 08:53 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed

ironwalker:

irc: they should try either noml or choose next older driver from script

noml is 'no-modelines'

delete all modelines

Prefered option is to chose next older driver from script. I can't see how to do that off the top of my head, maybe tomorrow will show it.

2radical - 05.06.2006, 14:51 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed

h2: Thanks for the great explanation--I have a much better understanding now
kurt

ironwalker - 05.06.2006, 21:31 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed

Thank you h2....no,nothing out of the ordinary was removed or purged.Nothing extra,no gnome.Standard kde.
I had it working fine so I will just rename one of the backup xorg conf's that I had it working with in xorg7.
Thanks.
I probably wont get direct render working but at least I can get my gui back.
Now that I recall,there were a few upgrades in graphics with the older install radeon script that failed to allow direct render on.I am useing a 9800 pro card.I do have a spare gforce 5600 but really would like to keep the ati.

h2 - 05.06.2006, 22:25 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed

ironwalker, that's good to know, not an issue with the script then I think if you had this problem before.

Keep in mind that the xorg fixes are different, and necessary, for xorg 7 to work, so the xorg you use will have to have those fixes. If in doubt, you can just run the script over it again, that will fix the xorg without installiing the non working radeon driver.

The only difference is that you just say no to all the options except the fix xorg option, since you've already done them all.

Or you can just run the fix-xorg7.sh by itself, you can get the url from irc, type in !xorg and it will give you the information you need. But it's the same stuff as on the script.

ironwalker - 05.06.2006, 22:39 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed

Fixed!

I was stuck on all updates and what not in apt because it stopped instantly because it couldnt remove xorg-driver-fglrx....I deleted the /usr/lib/libGL.1.so and /usr/lib/fglrx directory and re-ran the fglrx install script,I have my kde desktop back.

h2 - 05.06.2006, 23:01 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuffed

Oh, that makes sense, there have been some other apt issues like that, opera is a particularly bad offender, you have to manually remove some file or other before apt can proceed since it won't remove a directory if something it doesn't know about is in it.

It's tempting to add your fix to the script but I can't do it if I can't test it myself, or if someone else can't test it on a few installs.

Glad you figured it out, I'll bookmark the thread in case the issue comes up again.

This sounds like the paths were changed at some point and either apt or the install-fglrx-debian.sh script weren't updated to take that into account.

I wish I had some ati stuff to test on but I don't currently, I don't even have a box with agp slots anymore.

To be clear: there were two issues? First the presence of those files/directories you removed kept apt from working? And two, apt not working kept install-fglrx-debian.sh from working?

Did the dist-upgrade go through during this process, it's not clear to me.

ironwalker - 05.06.2006, 23:09 Uhr
Titel: Re: RE: Re: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is stuf

h2 hat folgendes geschrieben::

To be clear: there were two issues? First the presence of those files/directories you removed kept apt from working? And two, apt not working kept install-fglrx-debian.sh from working?

Did the dist-upgrade go through during this process, it's not clear to me.

Yes to both.
It gave the dpkg divert error...apparantly it wanted to overwrite one file in /usr/lib to a file in /usr/lib/fglrx...which made no sense to me....the error msg stated that it wasnt allowed yet I was root and all permissions were fine.
I did come across an error that stated I needed to fix manually as well.

Yes dist-upgrade proceeded fine after deleteing the dir and file through the process.
I got some erors and an error in the build process that it said to check the modass buildlogs but when I left the blue screen areas and went back to console I lost all access to those error msg's.I will check the logs manually to see what what,it may be the answer to my direct rendering issue.

I have to get direct rendering to work now and may need to go into the kernel and see what raid/mdadm stuff is built in.So far everything is working with the newest kernel,xorg,drivers...looking good.

Have to go food shopping now. Lachen

ironwalker - 10.06.2006, 02:04 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Updated today ( 01 June 06) and Xorg is

Just to update a bit...........after todays dist-upgrade and updateing kanotix scripts then doing;
# make-kernel-links
# echo xserver-xorg install|dpkg --set-selections
before installing the ati drivers all is fine............direct rendering=on!

Thanks everyone.