I don't update my Fedora systems unless I have a real need, so yesterday I started updating from F35 to F38 I used the:
dnf system-update download --releasever=xx process.
- My first update from F35 to F36 worked. - Then I did the F36 to F37 update. KDE wouldn't work until I uninstalled qt5-qtwebengine-freeworld to get KDE on X11 to work again. - Once that was working I started the F37 to F38
It did all the downloads, transaction checking, and (presumably) installing and is now showing:
Booting 'Fedora Linux (6.8.4-100.fc38.x86_64) 38 (KDE Plasma)'
It's been about 2 hours... How long do I have to wait? It's also too bad, it doesn't tell you what it is or was last doing.
Help!
Fulko
On Sat, 2024-04-13 at 13:29 -0700, Fulko Hew wrote:
I don't update my Fedora systems unless I have a real need, so yesterday I started updating from F35 to F38 I used the:
dnf system-update download --releasever=xx process.
- My first update from F35 to F36 worked.
- Then I did the F36 to F37 update.
KDE wouldn't work until I uninstalled qt5-qtwebengine-freeworld to get KDE on X11 to work again.
- Once that was working I started the F37 to F38
It did all the downloads, transaction checking, and (presumably) installing and is now showing:
Booting 'Fedora Linux (6.8.4-100.fc38.x86_64) 38 (KDE Plasma)'
It's been about 2 hours... How long do I have to wait? It's also too bad, it doesn't tell you what it is or was last doing.
Help!
Hit Escape during the boot process to get the console log.
poc
On Sat, Apr 13, 2024 at 5:04 PM Patrick O'Callaghan pocallaghan@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, 2024-04-13 at 13:29 -0700, Fulko Hew wrote:
I don't update my Fedora systems unless I have a real need, so yesterday I started updating from F35 to F38 I used the:
dnf system-update download --releasever=xx process.
- My first update from F35 to F36 worked.
- Then I did the F36 to F37 update. KDE wouldn't work until I uninstalled qt5-qtwebengine-freeworld to get KDE on X11 to work again.
- Once that was working I started the F37 to F38
It did all the downloads, transaction checking, and (presumably) installing and is now showing:
Booting 'Fedora Linux (6.8.4-100.fc38.x86_64) 38 (KDE Plasma)'
It's been about 2 hours... How long do I have to wait? It's also too bad, it doesn't tell you what it is or was last doing.
Help!
Hit Escape during the boot process to get the console log.
I had been afraid to power cycle the PC in case I could be interrupting something important or critical. (I've seen the last two updates have various steps that were quiet for a LONG time, so I figured this could have been one of them.)
I put aside my fear and pushed the power button. This time it booted fine without any interaction.
Thanks for giving me the confidence(blessing). :-) Now to try the F38 to F39 upgrade. Wish me luck.
On Sat, 2024-04-13 at 17:37 -0400, Fulko Hew wrote:
On Sat, 2024-04-13 at 13:29 -0700, Fulko Hew wrote:
I don't update my Fedora systems unless I have a real need, so yesterday I started updating from F35 to F38
Just as an aside: leaving a two year old Fedora system without updating is definitely not recommended. F35, F36 and F37 are all EOLed and don't get even critical security updates. With F40 due for release soon, F38 will also fall into that category in a month or two.
poc
On Sun, Apr 14, 2024 at 7:16 AM Patrick O'Callaghan pocallaghan@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, 2024-04-13 at 17:37 -0400, Fulko Hew wrote:
On Sat, 2024-04-13 at 13:29 -0700, Fulko Hew wrote:
I don't update my Fedora systems unless I have a real need, so yesterday I started updating from F35 to F38
Just as an aside: leaving a two year old Fedora system without updating is definitely not recommended. F35, F36 and F37 are all EOLed and don't get even critical security updates. With F40 due for release soon, F38 will also fall into that category in a month or two.
Thanks for giving me the guts to do a brute force power cycle in the apparent middle of an upgrade in progress. (FYI. The upgrade to F39 also hung at the boot message, and it too needed a power-cycle to successfully boot.)
Now on to the philosophy issue. 'Why the delay in upgrades?' In the beginning (25+ years ago) there was no such thing as upgrades, only re-installs, so the process of reconfiguring and migrating private data and apps was tedious (on the order of days). So I wanted to avoid that. The pains were not worth the benefits.
Then in corporate life, I needed to ensure a stable development environment. Upgrades still didn't exist, migrating whole development environments was a pain. But testing on other distributions and/or releases was relatively easy. (My longest gap, and most productive time, was deferring re-installs until it was F8 directly to F20)
F25 to F26 was a successful migration/upgrade.
Then it was back to are-install for F33 because it was a hardware replacement, and Linux/Fedora does not have a one-true backup/restore process that I have ever seen. (My first Unix was Xenix on a 286 and SCO allowed you to make an 'emergency boot floppy' and then restore a system from tape. It was a dirt simple one hour process to fully restore a system.)
After F33, it became an issue that I didn't want to migrate because I'd typically be losing functionality or user-convenience.
During F33 to 34/35 migration I remember losing all of my KiCad customizations for chips and connectors I had downloaded. During this F35 to F39 migration, I've lost the convenience of a Fedora supported FreeCAD. And since Wayland isn't a full-function replacement for X11 yet, I understand the next migration will break my remote X11 windows usage. (And a remote desktop is not a replacement for remote windows.)
If you've read this far, thank you. I hope you appreciate my story. P.S. And with every upgrade, software just gets slower.
On Sun, Apr 14, 2024 at 9:49 AM Fulko Hew fulko.hew@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Apr 14, 2024 at 7:16 AM Patrick O'Callaghan pocallaghan@gmail.com wrote: Then it was back to are-install for F33 because it was a hardware replacement, and Linux/Fedora does not have a one-true backup/restore process that I have ever seen. [...]
There may not be "one" backup/restore process, but there are several easy options. When I've done hw replacements my usual process is to use "dd" to create an image of the disk as it came from the factory (in case I ever want to use the Windows install it comes with), do another image of the source disk, and then "dd" the image to the new hw (this requires a suitable external USB drive or similar of course). If the new disk is larger I resize the LVs and file systems after the restore to take advantage of the additional space. You could do something similar using clonezilla. Or instead of "dd", you can use the appropriate dump/restore program for the file systems in question.
[If you don't have a suitable external drive, I would think you could use a USB thumb drive and a live ISO to boot the target, and then do the backup/restore over a ssh pipe]
During this F35 to F39 migration, I've lost the convenience of a Fedora supported FreeCAD.
You can try installing the F38 package on F39....
And since Wayland isn't a full-function replacement for X11 yet, I understand the next migration will break my remote X11 windows usage. (And a remote desktop is not a replacement for remote windows.)
From what I understand, Wayland will *never* be a full-function replacement for X11 as there are capabilities in X11 that Wayland considers to be security issues. But perhaps I have failed to properly understand Wayland.
On Sun, 2024-04-14 at 09:49 -0400, Fulko Hew wrote:
Then in corporate life, I needed to ensure a stable development environment.
This is one of the big problems with computers in the work place. You may have single-task computers which you want to work, and not mess around with. You may have a need for particular jobs that will always work in a certain way. Things in development can take ages to complete, and that's just sorting out your own needs, never mind having to deal with a system changing as well. System updates can pull the rug out from under you.
Computer systems with long life spans are essential in such environments, things that require replacing every 6 months or so are a real nuisance (to put it mildly).
Let's be clear, we're not talking about annoying changes to how the desktop looks, that can be put up with. But when you find essential software and/or hardware doesn't work anymore, or doesn't exist anymore, and support libraries are incompatible, that's a deal-breaker.
It's a part of the reasons Linux gets minimal support with hardware (printers, graphics cards, scanners, whatever). Those manufacturers don't want to be dealing with ever-changing infrastructure where someone else is making all these changes. And there's every chance that by the time they've developed their gadget and software for it, a Linux distro has changed OSs twice.
After F33, it became an issue that I didn't want to migrate because I'd typically be losing functionality or user-convenience.
During F33 to 34/35 migration I remember losing all of my KiCad customizations for chips and connectors I had downloaded. During this F35 to F39 migration, I've lost the convenience of a Fedora supported FreeCAD.
Addressing an issue someone else replied with: While one can try installing old software onto new systems, you often find it cannot be installed or run. It's not compatible.
Even the newer idea of the big-blob appimage (and their ilk) that's mostly self-contained without relying (much) on system libraries, and one blob is supposed to work on various different distros can fail to work on different versions of an OS.
So yes, change is a pain. In certain environments computers will never get updates. Once it's working, they'll keep it in that condition. It's not a problem with non-networked systems, but risky with networked ones.
I have a very old Mac in that boat (changes stuffed things up). It's used for video editing with Final Cut Pro, and that's its sole task. I kept updating for a while, but it can't be any more. They limit the newest OS you can put on it. And somewhere along the way, one of the Final Cut Pro updates became very crashy, and no further updates fixed that issue, and it wasn't possible to go back to a prior version that was stable.
P.S. And with every upgrade, software just gets slower.
I certainly noticed that with Windows. They seemed to just cobble patch upon patch, rather than replace borked things with working ones.
I can't say I've *directly* encountered upgrade slowdowns with Linux software. Though I have in the sense that Gnome and KDE developers seem to think everyone has a PC with an insanely powerful graphics card and oodles of RAM to just run the desktop. I don't care about the damn desktop, it's applications I want to use.
On 4/14/24 11:20, Tim via users wrote:
Let's be clear, we're not talking about annoying changes to how the desktop looks, that can be put up with. But when you find essential software and/or hardware doesn't work anymore, or doesn't exist anymore, and support libraries are incompatible, that's a deal-breaker.
It's a part of the reasons Linux gets minimal support with hardware (printers, graphics cards, scanners, whatever). Those manufacturers don't want to be dealing with ever-changing infrastructure where someone else is making all these changes. And there's every chance that by the time they've developed their gadget and software for it, a Linux distro has changed OSs twice.
The only reason this is a problem for some manufacturers is because they want to keep it proprietary. Printers and scanners (and any other hardware) that use open standards or provide open-source drivers work great with Linux. Compare the difference between NVidia and AMD or Intel. How often do you see people having issues with AMD or Intel graphics compared to the never-ending issues with NVidia drivers?
The same issue applies to proprietary software as described in the first quoted paragraph.
Tim:
Let's be clear, we're not talking about annoying changes to how the desktop looks, that can be put up with. But when you find essential software and/or hardware doesn't work anymore, or doesn't exist anymore, and support libraries are incompatible, that's a deal-breaker.
It's a part of the reasons Linux gets minimal support with hardware (printers, graphics cards, scanners, whatever). Those manufacturers don't want to be dealing with ever-changing infrastructure where someone else is making all these changes. And there's every chance that by the time they've developed their gadget and software for it, a Linux distro has changed OSs twice.
Samuel Sieb:
The only reason this is a problem for some manufacturers is because they want to keep it proprietary. Printers and scanners (and any other hardware) that use open standards or provide open-source drivers work great with Linux. Compare the difference between NVidia and AMD or Intel. How often do you see people having issues with AMD or Intel graphics compared to the never-ending issues with NVidia drivers?
I don't agree. It's a PART of the reason, sure. But not the only reason. When you're developing anything computing or electronics, there's often years between conception of the idea and (allegedly) finished product.
That's hard to do when you're trying to fit into someone else's product that keeps changing. You have to learn how it works before you can develop for it, but then *it* changes and you have to start again. Certainly, open standards help, but many of them don't exist when you start, and others come into being in the middle.
In both electronics and computing you have developers who want things done their way, and rival techniques vie for pole position. Linux seems very bad at continually re-inventing the wheel. How many different sound systems have we had over the years?
On 4/15/24 20:04, Tim via users wrote:
Samuel Sieb:
The only reason this is a problem for some manufacturers is because they want to keep it proprietary. Printers and scanners (and any other hardware) that use open standards or provide open-source drivers work great with Linux. Compare the difference between NVidia and AMD or Intel. How often do you see people having issues with AMD or Intel graphics compared to the never-ending issues with NVidia drivers?
I don't agree. It's a PART of the reason, sure. But not the only reason. When you're developing anything computing or electronics, there's often years between conception of the idea and (allegedly) finished product.
That seems very unlikely.
That's hard to do when you're trying to fit into someone else's product that keeps changing. You have to learn how it works before you can develop for it, but then *it* changes and you have to start again. Certainly, open standards help, but many of them don't exist when you start, and others come into being in the middle.
In both electronics and computing you have developers who want things done their way, and rival techniques vie for pole position. Linux seems very bad at continually re-inventing the wheel. How many different sound systems have we had over the years?
That has nothing to do with the hardware. The base sound card drivers didn't change, so it was irrelevant to any sound device makers.
If your design team and product is so stuck that you can't follow changes like that, then you're already in trouble.
On 4/14/24 14:20, Tim via users wrote:
On Sun, 2024-04-14 at 09:49 -0400, Fulko Hew wrote:
Then in corporate life, I needed to ensure a stable development environment.
This is one of the big problems with computers in the work place. You may have single-task computers which you want to work, and not mess around with. You may have a need for particular jobs that will always work in a certain way. Things in development can take ages to complete, and that's just sorting out your own needs, never mind having to deal with a system changing as well. System updates can pull the rug out from under you.
Computer systems with long life spans are essential in such environments, things that require replacing every 6 months or so are a real nuisance (to put it mildly).
Let's be clear, we're not talking about annoying changes to how the desktop looks, that can be put up with. But when you find essential software and/or hardware doesn't work anymore, or doesn't exist anymore, and support libraries are incompatible, that's a deal-breaker.
It's a part of the reasons Linux gets minimal support with hardware (printers, graphics cards, scanners, whatever). Those manufacturers don't want to be dealing with ever-changing infrastructure where someone else is making all these changes. And there's every chance that by the time they've developed their gadget and software for it, a Linux distro has changed OSs twice.
After F33, it became an issue that I didn't want to migrate because I'd typically be losing functionality or user-convenience.
During F33 to 34/35 migration I remember losing all of my KiCad customizations for chips and connectors I had downloaded. During this F35 to F39 migration, I've lost the convenience of a Fedora supported FreeCAD.
Addressing an issue someone else replied with: While one can try installing old software onto new systems, you often find it cannot be installed or run. It's not compatible.
Even the newer idea of the big-blob appimage (and their ilk) that's mostly self-contained without relying (much) on system libraries, and one blob is supposed to work on various different distros can fail to work on different versions of an OS.
So yes, change is a pain. In certain environments computers will never get updates. Once it's working, they'll keep it in that condition. It's not a problem with non-networked systems, but risky with networked ones.
I have a very old Mac in that boat (changes stuffed things up). It's used for video editing with Final Cut Pro, and that's its sole task. I kept updating for a while, but it can't be any more. They limit the newest OS you can put on it. And somewhere along the way, one of the Final Cut Pro updates became very crashy, and no further updates fixed that issue, and it wasn't possible to go back to a prior version that was stable.
P.S. And with every upgrade, software just gets slower.
I certainly noticed that with Windows. They seemed to just cobble patch upon patch, rather than replace borked things with working ones.
I can't say I've *directly* encountered upgrade slowdowns with Linux software. Though I have in the sense that Gnome and KDE developers seem to think everyone has a PC with an insanely powerful graphics card and oodles of RAM to just run the desktop. I don't care about the damn desktop, it's applications I want to use.
Real problem for scientific systems. Scientific Linux that was going to provide some stability died. CERN is trying to roll their own version of CENTOS 8,9 since its promise of more stability was moot. Seen many instances of measurement hardware dependent on systems that passed away, OS/2. Now we are being told that our cars will die when the software is unavailable!
On 4/14/24 06:49, Fulko Hew wrote:
Thanks for giving me the guts to do a brute force power cycle in the apparent middle of an upgrade in progress. (FYI. The upgrade to F39 also hung at the boot message, and it too needed a power-cycle to successfully boot.)
If it's still at the boot message, then it hasn't actually started. When it gets to the update process, there will be messages saying that.
On Sat, Apr 13, 2024 at 4:30 PM Fulko Hew fulko.hew@gmail.com wrote:
I don't update my Fedora systems unless I have a real need, so yesterday I started updating from F35 to F38 I used the:
dnf system-update download --releasever=xx process.
Related, you should follow < https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/upgrading-fedora-offline/%3E.
- My first update from F35 to F36 worked.
- Then I did the F36 to F37 update. KDE wouldn't work until I uninstalled qt5-qtwebengine-freeworld to get KDE on X11 to work again.
- Once that was working I started the F37 to F38
It did all the downloads, transaction checking, and (presumably) installing and is now showing:
Booting 'Fedora Linux (6.8.4-100.fc38.x86_64) 38 (KDE Plasma)'
It's been about 2 hours... How long do I have to wait? It's also too bad, it doesn't tell you what it is or was last doing.
Jeff
On Sat, Apr 13, 2024 at 6:05 PM Jeffrey Walton noloader@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Apr 13, 2024 at 4:30 PM Fulko Hew fulko.hew@gmail.com wrote:
I don't update my Fedora systems unless I have a real need, so yesterday I started updating from F35 to F38 I used the:
dnf system-update download --releasever=xx process.
Related, you should follow < https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/upgrading-fedora-offline/
.
Correct. I have been following that process.
As an aside, I've been checking to see if an upgrade was removing any packages. I noticed that on migrating to F39, that FreeCAD was being removed. RATS! Another hurdle to jump. Turns out that FreeCAD's applimage works, and I created a menu entry for it. But gosh, the appimage version of it is just under a gig in size! Oh well, I've gotta do what I've gotta do. I'm hoping that the move to F39 is just as easy.
-
Fulko Hew -
Go Canes -
Jeffrey Walton -
Patrick O'Callaghan -
Robert McBroom -
Samuel Sieb -
Tim