[KLUG Members] Crash of RH7.2 - advice?

[Adam Williams]

>>>I've had an unfortunate problem in upgrading my RH7.1 to RH7.2.
>>>[using BSware of course].  One rpm could not be loaded; then a crash
>>DO you remember which one?
>Yes.  It was a mount ... rpm update (subversion b to e?) This morning, I
>tried manually updating mount and got NO response!  The older (7.1)
>version was installed so I had to install with --force the newer version,
>leaving two versions installed.

Also might be worth it to do an "rpm --rebuilddb" before going any 
further, just to make sure everything is sane.

>>>occurs after about 60% of the rpms have been loaded.  While I've saved
>>>the crash data as suggested, I don't know how to use it.  When starting
>>>the update, I am warned that my partitions are not what was expected but
>>>that I could proceed.  I can get to my files in the rescue mode and can
>>>update whatever rpm's I wish.  Actually the latter is a little dificult
>>>since the new rpm's (pine for example) use more recent libraries but I
>>>can't upgrade those since other programs depend on the older libraries.
>>>My solution has been to force the installation of the new rpms,
>>>leaving the old rpm's intact.  Not efficient use of disk space but so
>>>far it works.
>>You can force the "upgrade" of packages, and liberal use of --nodeps
>>will let you put in new libraries regardless of "old" applications.
>I didn't yet use --nodeps but will try.
>>If the new kernel & kernel-BOOT packages were installed, completeing the
>>upgrade by hand isn't that hard.
>Good news!
>>Do an rpm -qa | grep lib to see more or less all the libraries you can
>>installed and upgrade those.  Some won't show up in that list like
>>ncurses, etc... But sooner or later another package will ask for those.
>neat.
>>Don't forget you can do more than one package at a time, as in
>>rpm -Uvh x.y.rpm a.b.rpm m.n.rpm  and this can be used to satisfy
>>dependencies as well.
>I LIKE that way of handling the dependencies problems.

Yes, if you can get gpm (cut-n-paste) to work this cane make the process 
much quicker.  

>>Then spin around and do the "applications",  with shells being first
>>bash, etc...
>I must have been working in the bash shell in the rescue mode, right?

Sometimes,  you may also be running a statically linked shell (ash?)

>>It really doesn't take that long, ~30 minutes.  I have to upgrade a
>>couple of my larger machines this way as the installer takes one look at
>>them and runs screaming of the end of a short pier.
>Ah, mustn't let potentials users apprehensive about the installation
>problems hear about this.

Well, if they have an ASCI (wyse) console, 11 SCSI busses, and high 
density serial interfaces.... I'd expect them to be not so suprised.

One nice thing is that alot of these upgrades can be performed hot,  I 
upgraded from 7.0 to 7.1 without a reboot.  Then I just rebooted later to 
get the new kernel.  I'm hoping some of the stuff going into 2.5 will 
eliminate the need to reboot completely,  it just takes a really long 
time.

>>>Right now I need to look at a gnumeric file.  I can't get into the
>>>Xwindows mode so I can't run gnumeric.  I can transfer the file to a
>>>floppy (alas, not a zip disk) and so take it to a non-crippled machine
>>>but I have no access to another LINUX machine and I don't believe Excel
>>>on my wife's more powerful system running ME will be able to read the
>>>gnumeric file.
>>>I may have to start a new installation but would appreciate any guidance
>>>at this awkward moment.
>>No hope of running another upgrade?  Although it would probably die at
>>the same point,  if you manually install the package it gagged on it
>>might work.
>I've already tried twice but not with the new mount package.

Once you slam the mount package in manually it might be worth a try,  as 
it will just see it there an "pass over".

>Would it be a good idea to use the former loader, LILO, instead of the new
>one (GRUB?)?

If you still using LILO I'd just leave it alone till everything else is 
working.  The key to problem resolution is to never change more than one 
thing at a time. 

>>The gnumeric file is zipped XML.  If you just want the raw data any XML
>>parser should be able to show you that.
>Such as Mozilla which I have installed on my wife's ME?  

It may not be too pretty, but it works in a pinch.

>Wonder if there
>is an MSwindows spreadsheet that uses XML?

Yes, Office 2000. It uses M$-XML however. :(  I was pretty excited at 
first,  then it was "Ahh $&^@*)_!, why the *^&$*@) &$^&*@)# did they do 
that."

>VERY helpful, Adam.  I'll report on my progress.  Hope to make the meeting
>tonight - might even have somthing new then.  Interesting process.

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Ximian GNOME, Evolution, LTSP, and RedHat Linux + LVM & XFS
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