Graduated from "Absent trash icon" to disaster

[Stan Goodman]

On Wed, 29 Dec 2010 02:25:11 +0530, Stan Goodman

On Wed, 29 Dec 2010 01:19:07 +0530, Stan Goodman

------------
zypper mr -d <repo alias|repo no.|repo URI>
------------

We are past that stage now, and zypper dup has been chugging away
for over an hour, doing its thing.

yes, i didn't see the other posts saying the same thing before i
posted this one. sounds good, and good luck!

That's what I thought too. The reinstallation is finished now, after
an hour and a half plus, and I was told that some programs haven't
been restarted because they depended on files that have been deleted.
I was advised to run zypper -ps.
That produced a file of nearly 30KB, containing a list of what appear
to be library files; I was able to save this file, but not to copy it
to another machine through NFS, so I can't exhibit it here.
What am I to make of this? Is this normal in the circumstances?

"zypper ps" shows you processes that use files that have been deleted
during the upgrade. that's normal; files get deleted and replaced by
different versions, being switched to another repo. the programs using
them won't crash immediately because these files still exist in some
temporary fashion.
you can run "zypper ve" (verify), to make sure that all dependencies
are fulfilled. that should show nothing; "zypper ps" showing a lot of
libraries being used by running processes is normal at this stage.
you'll have to log out of KDE, and back in to see if everything works
as it should. (i think there should be nothing in the update requiring
a full reboot; wouldn't hurt to do it anyway i guess...)

I have not been able to find hints about how to approach the apparent
failure of the reinstallation, and I can add only the following few
observations to what I have already reported:

1) After running zypper ps, the report was that there were no unstarted
packages. Running zypper ve reported that there are no unresolved
dependencies.

2) Booting the system to runlevel 5 doesn't end exactly as I reported
earlier. I observed that there is near the end an interval of a few
seconds when the mouse cursor is not frozen, but seems to behave normally,
then freezes and jumps to the center of the screen and freezes. The
progress gauge does not reach the end position and stop, but freezes a
little sooner than it did the first time. The Desktop Folder and Panel
never come up as they did the first time.

3) FWIW, the startup log reports that the following actions failed:
Starting VirtualBox kernel modules
Starting Postfix
Starting rng-tools

If any of this suggests a diagnostic approach to anyone, I'd like to know
what.it is, because I have nothing. In the absence of any other
suggestion, I think I have to abandon the installation and install 11.3
elsewhere on the HD, then try to fetch data to it from this one.

[phanisvara das]

Did you try removing the .kde4 and .kde directories before logging on.
Yes you will lose any setup you have but you are going to lose that
anyway with a fresh install.
Go to runlevel 3
and login as your user and
mv .kde4 .kde4.old && mv .kde .kde.old
Go back to runlevel 5 and try to login again.

yes, of course! i didn't think of this (just got up), but that's one of the first things to do when KDE seems messed up. resets all your KDE settings to their defaults. specially in your case, where different versions of KDE have been writing settings & config. files, this might very well help.

if it does work afterwards, you can still try to rescue contacts, emails, and even settings, one by one, from the previous (renamed) KDE folders and include them in the new ones.

[Ken Schneider - openSUSE]

Post by Stan Goodman

On Wed, 29 Dec 2010 02:25:11 +0530, Stan Goodman

I have not been able to find hints about how to approach the apparent
failure of the reinstallation, and I can add only the following few
1) After running zypper ps, the report was that there were no unstarted
packages. Running zypper ve reported that there are no unresolved
dependencies.
2) Booting the system to runlevel 5 doesn't end exactly as I reported
earlier. I observed that there is near the end an interval of a few
seconds when the mouse cursor is not frozen, but seems to behave normally,
then freezes and jumps to the center of the screen and freezes. The
progress gauge does not reach the end position and stop, but freezes a
little sooner than it did the first time. The Desktop Folder and Panel
never come up as they did the first time.
Starting VirtualBox kernel modules
Starting Postfix
Starting rng-tools
If any of this suggests a diagnostic approach to anyone, I'd like to know
what.it is, because I have nothing. In the absence of any other
suggestion, I think I have to abandon the installation and install 11.3
elsewhere on the HD, then try to fetch data to it from this one.

Did you try removing the .kde4 and .kde directories before logging on.
Yes you will lose any setup you have but you are going to lose that
anyway with a fresh install.

Go to runlevel 3
and login as your user and
mv .kde4 .kde4.old && mv .kde .kde.old

Go back to runlevel 5 and try to login again.

[phanisvara das]

Post by Stan Goodman

On Wed, 29 Dec 2010 02:25:11 +0530, Stan Goodman

On Wed, 29 Dec 2010 01:19:07 +0530, Stan Goodman

------------
zypper mr -d <repo alias|repo no.|repo URI>
------------

We are past that stage now, and zypper dup has been chugging away
for over an hour, doing its thing.

yes, i didn't see the other posts saying the same thing before i
posted this one. sounds good, and good luck!

That's what I thought too. The reinstallation is finished now, after
an hour and a half plus, and I was told that some programs haven't
been restarted because they depended on files that have been deleted.
I was advised to run zypper -ps.
That produced a file of nearly 30KB, containing a list of what appear
to be library files; I was able to save this file, but not to copy it
to another machine through NFS, so I can't exhibit it here.
What am I to make of this? Is this normal in the circumstances?

"zypper ps" shows you processes that use files that have been deleted
during the upgrade. that's normal; files get deleted and replaced by
different versions, being switched to another repo. the programs using
them won't crash immediately because these files still exist in some
temporary fashion.
you can run "zypper ve" (verify), to make sure that all dependencies
are fulfilled. that should show nothing; "zypper ps" showing a lot of
libraries being used by running processes is normal at this stage.
you'll have to log out of KDE, and back in to see if everything works
as it should. (i think there should be nothing in the update requiring
a full reboot; wouldn't hurt to do it anyway i guess...)

I have not been able to find hints about how to approach the apparent
failure of the reinstallation, and I can add only the following few
1) After running zypper ps, the report was that there were no unstarted
packages. Running zypper ve reported that there are no unresolved
dependencies.
2) Booting the system to runlevel 5 doesn't end exactly as I reported
earlier. I observed that there is near the end an interval of a few
seconds when the mouse cursor is not frozen, but seems to behave normally,
then freezes and jumps to the center of the screen and freezes. The
progress gauge does not reach the end position and stop, but freezes a
little sooner than it did the first time. The Desktop Folder and Panel
never come up as they did the first time.
Starting VirtualBox kernel modules
Starting Postfix
Starting rng-tools
If any of this suggests a diagnostic approach to anyone, I'd like to know
what.it is, because I have nothing. In the absence of any other
suggestion, I think I have to abandon the installation and install 11.3
elsewhere on the HD, then try to fetch data to it from this one.

i'm sorry, but i'm running out of ideas; i don't understand what's going on. perhaps somebody else can give you better advice, but at this point i'd probably go for a new install and then, as you wrote, rescue your data from the old one.

[Stan Goodman]

Post by Stan Goodman

On Wed, 29 Dec 2010 02:25:11 +0530, Stan Goodman

I have not been able to find hints about how to approach the apparent
failure of the reinstallation, and I can add only the following few
1) After running zypper ps, the report was that there were no
unstarted packages. Running zypper ve reported that there are no
unresolved dependencies.
2) Booting the system to runlevel 5 doesn't end exactly as I reported
earlier. I observed that there is near the end an interval of a few
seconds when the mouse cursor is not frozen, but seems to behave
normally, then freezes and jumps to the center of the screen and
freezes. The progress gauge does not reach the end position and stop,
but freezes a little sooner than it did the first time. The Desktop
Folder and Panel never come up as they did the first time.
Starting VirtualBox kernel modules
Starting Postfix
Starting rng-tools
If any of this suggests a diagnostic approach to anyone, I'd like to
know what.it is, because I have nothing. In the absence of any other
suggestion, I think I have to abandon the installation and install
11.3 elsewhere on the HD, then try to fetch data to it from this one.

Did you try removing the .kde4 and .kde directories before logging on.
Yes you will lose any setup you have but you are going to lose that
anyway with a fresh install.
Go to runlevel 3
and login as your user and
mv .kde4 .kde4.old && mv .kde .kde.old
Go back to runlevel 5 and try to login again.

Nope. That ain't it. Back to Plan B.

But .kde4 and .kde are not the problem, that suggests that it may be
possible to bring them over to a new installation in toto. I don't see
that I risk much by trying that.

Many thanks to you both for your efforts, and to others for chiming in.