Various problems and solutions encountered on the way whilst performing SuSE upgrades.
- 8.0 to 8.1 - 07-Nov-2002
- 8.1 to 8.2 - 04-Sep-2003
- 8.2 to 9.0 - 12-Nov-2003
- 9.0 to 9.1 - 09-Jul-2004
- 9.1 to 9.2 - 04-Feb-2005
Upgrade of SuSE from 9.1 to 9.2 - 04-Feb-2005
Latests builds of required packages were increasingly being 9.2 first with 9.1 following sometiem later. Straight forward upgrade from DVD. Other issues sorted after applying latest updates.
Basically; selected the 'new installaton' changing the default partion selections from SuSE installation to those in partitions and selecting the 'format' option (except /home and /home/dean/home/camera and the NTFS/VFAT partitions !) N.b. I tar'd up /etc into /home/dean/etc_91.tgz prior to installation for reference purposes.
Finished off with a 'YOU'...
Upgrade of SuSE from 9.0 to 9.1 - 09-Jul-2004
Surprisingly straight forward upgrade from DVD. Other issues sorted after applying latest updates.
Upgrade of SuSE from 8.2 to 9.0 - 12-Nov-2003
Lost 2nd hardrive (/opt, /var and /srv. /srv was backed up , the system directories /var and /opt/were not…). The hard drive was completely dead, no response even at the BIOS level. Thus, whilst rebuilding the system, I decided to install SuSE 9.0 instead of the current 8.2. (If I am going to spend time messing about with package installs I might as well use the latest …)
Remounted /dev/hda6 (was /opt/local) has /opt and move contents to /opt/local. Leave / (root) to handle contents of /var. When 2nd drive is replaced I will return the machine to the rquired partitioning …
Installation issues
- SuSE Update hangs -
Attempts to read the current installed packages (from the now empty /var... !)
- KDE kicker not working -
After re-installation KDE starts and provides desktop but no panel. Kicker complains of unresolved library references...
- KDE complains about DCOP for user 'ama' -
User uid defined but not used as a login requiring a desktop causing problems with the login screen.
Resolution
- SuSE Update hangs -
Used current 8.2 DVD to force install lots of packages to provide a basic rpm database. Then, when updating from SuSE 9.0, I selected all relevant packages.
- KDE kicker not working -
Due to updates of KDE3 on 8.2 which were newer than those on the 9.0 CD. Download the latest KDE3 updates and tried again. (Gnome and use of kmail and konqueror worked fine whilst updating the KDE rpms).
- KDE complains about DCOP for user 'ama' -
Turn off automatic login, and hide the offending user from the list of available login accounts.
Upgrade of SuSE from 8.1 to 8.2 - 04-Sep-2003
Release of SuSE 8.2 (highlights: glibc 2.3, gtk2-2.2, cdrecord 2....)
I want to use the pre-release of Gimp 2.0 which requires upgrading many packages including the latest glibc and gtk related packages. These are provided as packages by SuSE for 8.2 but not for 8.1. I also want the latest cd writing tools again provided for 8.2 but not 8.1. Compiling these packages requires updating and compiling lots of other packages...
So I have decided the quickest means of achieving the desired packages was to upgrade to SuSE 8.2. This is instead of compiling and installing myself, which I can do and have done so before, I prefer to keep most of the system defined by the rpm packages. Exceptions to this are: -
- Gimp
- The latest release with lots of new features I want to look at.
- xemacs
- Latest release as not actively followed SuSE.
- nVidia
- Latest drivers for the nVidia graphics card (not supplied by SuSE)
- xine plus suport libraries
- Not supplied by SuSE (for obvious reasons.)
Installation issues
- DVD unable to find packages -
Same problem as initial installation of SuSE 8.0 and SuSE 8.1 !
- NVidia driver not working -
Failed to start X server.
- Package issues -
mc (midnight commander) and openssl-doc failed to install due to cpio error. kde3-3.1.3 for 8.1 works fine with 8.2.
Resolution
- DVD unable to find packages -
Same resolution as 8.0, use CDs instead.
- NVidia driver not working -
See details in upgrading nVidia 04-Sep-2003.
- Package issues -
I don't use mc (midnight commander) so forget about the error. Manual 'rpm -Uvh' afterwards worked fine.
Upgrade of SuSE from 8.0 to 8.1 - 07-Nov-2002
Release of SuSE 8.1 (highlight: optimized for i586)....
Installation issues
- DVD unable to find packages -
Same problem as initial installation of SuSE 8.0.
- KDE failed to run -
KDE failed to start, dropping into a partially working Gnome system. Motif and windowmaker appeared to work fine.
- Loss of newer releases -
To fix KDE problem I had to revert to older package releases.Resolution
- DVD unable to find packages -
Same resolution as 8.0, use CDs instead.
- KDE failed to run -
The problem was I had manually updated, amongst other packages, SuSE 8.0 to KDE 3.0.4, whereas SuSE 8.1 was 3.0.3. This resulted in a partial set of packages being installed, which resulted in a very broken KDE system (and a nearly working gnome system, and a fully working Motif system.)
Solution. Force all packages to be updated (downdated ?) to those on SuSE 8.1 distribution. This worked fine and had the benefit of ensuring I was using i585 optimized code.
- Loss of newer releases -
Tried the Yast Online Update (YOU) tool to recover the newer package releases. The operation of which is very sensitive to retrieval problems, failing to install any packages if even one of the packages failed to get transferred from the update site. Eventually, by a mixture of manually applying the download but uninstalled packages and YOU, the 8k2 was back and up to date.
Further updates to the YOU package has improved it's reliability.