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9.1 is Disappointing (even a disaster)


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Best way out is to install:

- make sure / is formatted so that all old files are removed

- keep /home intact

i've also found this to be the best way of going about an install. some people suggest getting rid of config files in /home, however, i have yet to find this necessary. but then again, i don't use KDE and all those other programs that most people run into problems with (in the way of config files messing things up).

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Upgrade of all packages and proper config changes should take care of most problems. But thats very tricky. About, KDE-3.1 on LM9.0, texstar compiled them on LM9.0 so they work ok on LM9.0. If you try to install LM9.1 KDE rpms on LM9.0 (or vice-versa), it won't work.

 

Of course not, LM9.1 has its own KDE-3.1 compiled against glibc-2.3.1. Probably the supermount in the kernel-2.4.21 has some tweaks to work with KDE-3.1 in 9.1.

 

As for solving dependency hell, well it will probably take more time than a fresh-install so I will not go into that. Upgrading all package * should * work but... it might involve some quirks somewhere. It seems some package such as Broadcast 2000 is gone in Mdk 9.1. So the dependency resolution might not all solved with missing packages.

 

In final analysis, fresh install is still recommended. But /home can be kept I think.

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i've also found this to be the best way of going about an install. some people suggest getting rid of config files in /home, however, i have yet to find this necessary. but then again, i don't use KDE and all those other programs that most people run into problems with (in the way of config files messing things up).
Actually, often, we need to delete problematic config files in /home too. But there is a tradeoff between keeping your old settings and making the new software work correctly with old settings. As for KDE, I usually delete ~/.kde*.

 

In final analysis, fresh install is still recommended. But /home can be kept I think.
Thats what I always do. So far it has worked fine.
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Since it was my post that started all this, perhaps I can make a suggestion? (Is this a question?)

 

Why not take this combined wisdom and make a post for the Tip and Techniques Forum that discusses the best way to upgrade from a prior version? (another question?) :wink:

 

I know that I am concerned about how to handle a number of applications that I have installed on one of my LM9.0 boxes that have required some modification to / files. Like a GIANT dummy I know I don't have notes on all of these. :oops:

 

The other 2 are no big deal since they are used more for learning/fun.

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Thats your attitude problem.

Didn't know I had one...

 

This forum does not require that people stick with mandrake distros (in fact even posts about non-mandrake linux are allowed). In any case, expression of such an opinion does not justify moving the post, which is the real issue.

That was not however what I was commenting on. I was more commenting on the reaction of SoulSe, and other reactions to his.

 

Firstly, 911 was a rough analogy so there's no point beating on it. Its always possible to harp on the dissimilarities of the analogy than its similarities. Secondly, its your interpretation of Tomb's post that is nonsensiical. All the title means is that LM9.1 has been a disaster for the user so far, which seems very true from the description of the user's problems. And as for calling the morgue, people do call 911 when they see a dead body. After all, its not for you to decide the "dead" status. A death certificate has to be issued by a doctor. If the circumstances are unusual, the police have to be informed as well. Hence calling 911 becomes a legal necessity. Besides, the morgue may not accept a dead body without a death certificate issued by the relevant autorities.

Ok :) Point taken, first check if the patient is really dead... Though in my analogy, I was more thinking of a situation where you know the patient has deceased from the rotten sight and smell.... but let's not go there.

 

That depends on your definition of bitching. I see only a couple of lines of "bitching" and 15 lines of detailed problem description. If it had instead been 15 lines of bitching and 3 lines of problem description, I could agree with you.

Well, read my first post; I see a bunch of words as a title, and I mentioned I didn't like the wording. So to me (and to others) maybe mainly because of the title this post seemed to be bitching. Especially because of the closing comment.

 

Now if the poster would have written something like: this bloody thing doesn't work, how can you all be so happy (or not, seen your posts, ndeb... ) about it, how the he|| do I get it to work too......
Not sure what u mean.

I meant that I have seen that you are not an undivided happy Mdk user, since you have experienced problems that should have been fixed but weren't.

 

My problem posts always come with problem description. And I am not bothered if you have not faced the same problems. For example, if I do not have a printer, I cannot reproduce a problem that affects printer installation. That does not mean the bug is not there.

Agree entirely.

 

I didn't mean he should ask politely "or else", I meant: he could have put things in different wordings to make clear that insightful comments would be appreciated and that he would still try to get things fixed. Which, actually he did in later posts.
He could have and he didn't because its his choice. But the post was enough on-topic to stay where it originally was.

Ok. Not my call, and I never voiced an opinion on that as far as I know...

 

I was commenting on the title and the contents, and on the reaction of SoulSe amongst others.

So I put a more refined statement against the "9.1 is Disappointing (even a disaster)" title.

 

Anyway, back on topic,.... :)

To the original poster: I just included a statement on my website. Now only to get all unaware users to read that... ;)

 

I agree there should be a warning somewhere (tips & tricks), but the problem is, people won't read it until it's too late...

 

Another thing, how can we make sure they improve on this for the future? Or can the update option hardly ever work properly? (I know it can, I've used it from 8.2 to 9.0)

 

Config files are in /etc and for me

du -s /etc

tells me I have 19MB in there. So if need be, you can backup your /etc to a subdir in your homedir or so, (you do have a separate partition for /home I hope), then do the reinstall and when you find things are not working, you can check in /home/[username]/etc for the contents of your old config file to compare and make modifications of the new ones accordingly.

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Another thing, how can we make sure they improve on this for the future? Or can the update option hardly ever work properly? (I know it can, I've used it from 8.2 to 9.0)
My experience with upgrade to 9.0 from 8.2 is just the opposite. It did not work and I got a mixed system. I think my post in http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php...er=asc&start=29 gives a good idea of what is necessary. The installer should first make a list of all the currently installed packages because all must be upgraded (to avoid a mixed system). Then the user should be warned about any extra CD's needed (CD2 and CD3) to get the job done. If the user says that he/she does not have all of them, the upgrade should abort. Thats the only safe way of doing an upgrade: either you upgrade completely or you don't. No partial upgrades allowed (if mandrake wants they can still put that as a high-risk feature).
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ndeb, so I guess the wise thing to do for Mdk is to put a warning the moment people get to choose what they want, install or upgrade....

which they won't put there, since it would raise the newbies eyebrows and possibly scare some out of touching mdk again.

 

Which is sure to happen to some unlucky few who actually try the feature (hey how did this whole topic start anyway... :) ), but maybe Mdk is counting on those numbering very low...

 

I don't see how it can ever work if people don't have all 3 cds of the newer version but had all 3 on the older/currently installed one...

Never thought about that, I live in a spoiled part of the world, never crossed my mind anyone would attempt an install with only 1cd. Actually, it's because I'm spoiling my part of the world, everybody I know who has mandrake has gotten it off of me... ;)

 

Anyway, I will put comments about upgrading on my website, I hope others do the same; maybe someone should put a sticky in the install section at the top? Because in hints & tips it is not necessarily found...

 

To tomb, as you can see people are falling over each other to help out, so if you haven't given up on Mdk try again and let us know how far you get, and as ndeb said, even if you switch to another linux, and run into problems...

Like I said, this forum/people here are great.

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Hey, aRTee, I know just about all the folks here are good or I wouldn't have felt free to post in the 1st place. I'm gonna try again on the fubar'd machine this weekend.

 

Just for the record I had all 3 cds, all were checked for validity and the upgrade failed miserably. Now that I understand it's no big deal I just wished I understood from the beginning. I think the whole upgrade thing did work moving from 8.2 to 9.0. You can imagine why I thought it would work going from 9.0 to 9.1.

 

Key elements of an upgrade process (which the installer should deal with) upgrading the critical (base) resources, Identifying all installed packages, identifying all dependencies for the installed packages, installing the upgraded packages and dependent elements, AND providing a report of unresolved issues. Particularly in an upgrade hardware should be a non-issue. The installed and working hardware should be known and if it won't work in the upgraded system notice should be provided before it starts.

 

I realize that this is a very high-level overview of an upgrade process and doesn't even come close to the detailed work that needs to be done but I think if you can't do these things don't even offer the upgrade. Credibility is everything at this stage.

 

Finally, anyone know how to get by the freeze while scanning serial ports? I was in a text based install mode.

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The Upgrade option is a mindless delusion that should have never been suggested much less implemented. I would favour the guillotine for those responsible for creating it. It has been the source of no end of trouble both in the install and down the road as other packages are really upgraded.

 

Mandrakesoft has many fundamental weaknesses in its decision making process that have precipitated their current predicament, not the actions of a previously employed deluded CEO. Alienating users with no Install tutorial and offering none of the kind of advice provided here or in the newsgroup is one such avoidable decision. For most, the first install of a new version is a daunting task frought with unseen gotchas. They do not need unexplained surprises created by the company wanting us to "join the club as the best way to support Mandrake" or order packages from any channel but a retail supplier to establish themselves as a viable product worth the top level of shelf placement.

 

This does not happen with Redhat and that, IMHO is why they are the front runner. We understand they are short of money. We accept that some hardware doesn't work because they could not test it sufficiently, if at all. We accept elimination of valuable packages. What we don't accept are arbitrary and unexplained changes made without announcement beforehand, an activity that takes little time and effort but indicates the value placed on the user base by the company . This omission only serves to alienate the user base and bring the scythe of bankruptcy death that much closer. It's another case of "it's really too bad."

 

Counterspy

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Just for the record I had all 3 cds, all were checked for validity and the upgrade failed miserably.
That should eliminate the possibility of having any old packages. Truely, the upgrade option seems more like a bug than a feature.

 

Now that I understand it's no big deal I just wished I understood from the beginning. I think the whole upgrade thing did work moving from 8.2 to 9.0. You can imagine why I thought it would work going from 9.0 to 9.1.
Thats very interesting. I am wondering that if both upgrades were not proper you will have a mixed system with binaries from 8.2, 9.0, and 9.1 !! Thats real ugly.

 

Counterspy,

I could not agree with you more. Mandrake really need to clean up their act.

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I agree with most of what has been said, but not all.

 

BTW tomb, don't worry about what I said, I just repeated stuff about your first message because I couldn't get my message across to ndeb,... ascii is such a limited form of communication... oh if we were only on a nice palmtree lined sandy beach with a couple of beers (or whatever you like), such discussions would be over in seconds... ;)

Just keep posting whenever you have something to say or ask.

 

BTW don't know about this freeze when scanning serial ports (repeating it here since maybe others missed that question), maybe you could try with some boot-options?? Don't know which ones though..

 

As for the upgrade stuff, I mostly used that whenever I had upgraded my hardware, from one graphics card to another, adding a tv card, etc (and in the beginning to install more software, I didn't know I could use the installer section in mcc). I did upgrade from 8.2 to 9.0 and it worked; as soon as I found out that my chipset was recognised (which it wasn't in 8.2 so I had to recompile the kernel to have dma which I needed to watch dvds which is one of the main reasons for me to have a computer) I just trashed that upgraded partition with a clean install. So it can come in handy, but not for what it seems to be made to do.

 

This does not happen with Redhat and that, IMHO is why they are the front runner.

True but not true. RH is front runner because they are American (as opposed to non-american, not specifically French) and know how to / can deal with US companies. I have worked in a French/multinational company, with large US parts, and I can tell you, in the US things are sometimes so different that a European management/employees will not handle things the right way if they haven't learnt how to. I currenly work in Switzerland in a company that is also very large and has big parts in the US, and here too we know that the american ways of dealing with things are different than what europeans know/are used to.

 

Second, RH has always focused on the corporate market. Which is something that from the start Mdk did not focus on; they started by making a RH with KDE. KDE is desktop. RH was and is server oriented.

Now that Mdk was getting success via the desktop into the server arena, RH changed their tune.

Up to 18months ago, they wouldn't and didn't really mention the desktop. They have stated time and again that the server is the right (and more or less only) place for linux. Then suddenly they changed their tune.

 

BTW, this is one of the reasons that I don't like RH (emotionally, I have plentyof logical, but small reasons).

 

Mdk has always focused on the home user. The one, unfortunately that doesn't pay if he doesn't have to, in most cases. Of all the people I know who use RH all of them bought a pack, dito for SuSE, not so for Mdk.

 

Do you think that corporations care about small install / configuration inconveniences of RH (no mp3 etcetc)?

 

I work at one such corporation, and they will only do RH (once the time comes, for the moment it's being looked at). Why? Because RH is hot in corporate america. They are in with HP, IBM et al.

Unix software (very expensive stuff) is being ported to linux as we type. And they are putting the mention: we support RH. So all unix to linux transitions will go to RH.

So, RH strategy is definitely the right one. Mdk will always be smaller.

They are focusing on the home user, the small guy, who has no cash, and now the small companies, who have no unix gurus.

 

Those with gurus will all go with RH, since RH is promising support, is backed by IBM and HP etcetc. So less risk if you advice RH. Everyone else is using that, so you as a guru won't get fired if you advice the same. Low risk.

 

In the mean time, RH is catching up fast with Mdk in terms of install/configuration etc.

 

One other thing: RH is very professional, and aimed at professionals. Mdk is for home users who want something easy to use. Needless to say that doesn't rake in the money in the same way; it's more a community effort than any other of the 3 big ones: RH, SuSE, Mdk. So yes, less professional...

 

So RH will remain the front runner, because of their strategy from the start, and current position. BTW companies all buy their software. No big company uses linux without having payed for the pack, they are too used to paying and want the support guarantee, even if they don't need it.

 

SuSE will be less used than Mdk since it's not (so) free, but count on preinstalled SuSE sometime very soon.

 

To me, the survival of Mdk means the most. If they can succeed, the FLOSS model is definitely proven. And that prove would be the best thing since sliced bread.

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I installed MDK9 and then upgraded to 9.1 by urpmi'ng the core packages for a mirror and since then I had no problem. (Except that mpage converts the first page incorrectly, but this is a different story ;-) ). IMO if you have a good internet connection this is a fast and simple way to update your system :-)

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SuGa, congrats and happy it works for you.

 

The bad thing about upgrade is that it doesn't always work. And (to me) even worse: the remedy is usually: reinstall.

 

That brings me to one of the reasons for not wanting to use that other platform: there you have the three R's --

Retry

Reboot

Reinstall

 

Anything should be done to keep that method away from linux.

The right way to do things in linux is described by the three C's (this is mine guys, but feel free to copy ;) )

Check

Communicate

Correct

 

Check: that you're using/doing things in the proper way, with google, this board, etcetc.

Communicate: about what the problem can be/was, how it can be solved for now and how it can be avoided and/or solved in the future.

Correct: fix the stuff for yourself and make sure the program/distro maker corrects it in the next version.

 

In the case of upgrade: it should not be used to upgrade from one installation/version to another/the next. But maybe: from one hardware config to another; imagine to have your monitor break and having a loner that is less performant, ie. that can't handle the display settings that the other one had (resolution, refresh rate)... etcetc.

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