LMDE BREAKAGES - tracking TESTING

[theophrastus]

confirm.
comment out "deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import" out in /etc/apt/sources.list
then apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade and all the held-backs go away.
then after restoring the commented-out the line, reboot, update, dist-upgrade (nothing to upgrade) and still happy as a minty clam.
thankee zerozero!

[ghostdawg]

try the following (but use it at your own risk, and in doubt copy-paste the output here)
- disable for moments the mint repo, do a update and full-upgrade
- have to warn you that with this move you will loose the patched libcairo2 (responsible for the fonts, after that they may not look so great - i personally see no big difference)

Ok, I'll give it a shot when I get home tomorrow and let you know how it work out.

Thnx.

[barryflanagan]

- have to warn you that with this move you will loose the patched libcairo2 (responsible for the fonts, after that they may not look so great - i personally see no big difference)

Hi,

I had to do the dist-upgrade but my fonts are messed up now. Any idea how to fix them up? I did a --reinstall of libcairo2 but that did not seem to make any difference.

Thanks

-Barry

[zerozero]

Barry,
look at this post to see if this helps viewtopic.php?f=198&t=67502&start=1220#p478254

[barryflanagan]

Barry,
look at this post to see if this helps viewtopic.php?f=198&t=67502&start=1220#p478254

Thank, I tried this but no difference. The system fonts, used in menus ect look OK, but the font used within applications is very poor. Where do these get set? Changing Settings -> Appearance -> Fonts only seems to affect the system fonts.

Thanks


[edit] Managed to get things good again, but only by manually downgrading fontconfig and libpixman, etc. which also necessitated completely removing all of my nvidia then changing to the /latest repository and re-installing.

All good now, but it means no more tracking the /incoming repository on this (my work) machine!

-Barry

[gotjazz]

Hrm so shprtly after i try moving to latest, libcairo is acting up again? I remember what a pain in the you-know-what that thing was when building gnome3 pre release versions or mixing in some userapace apps from unstable or testing...

Sent from my Nexus S using Tapatalk

[ghostdawg]

try the following (but use it at your own risk, and in doubt copy-paste the output here)
- disable for moments the mint repo, do a update and full-upgrade
- have to warn you that with this move you will loose the patched libcairo2 (responsible for the fonts, after that they may not look so great - i personally see no big difference)

Ok, I'll give it a shot when I get home tomorrow and let you know how it work out.

Thnx.

I was able to comment out the mint repo and run the update & full-upgrade and it worked but I'm still having an issue it seems with GDM. I'm not able to sign in and the screen view is large.

Here is a image of the gdm login screen, it was taken using my cell phone camera. Noticed the usernames screen is showing only the left side of the monitor and the right side is completely blank. Also noticed how large the mouse cursor is and when I move the cursor, the whole login screen moves with it. I click the username and the box to type password appears but when I type, nothing appears in the box.

Any more ideas what's going on?



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

[Chris M]

The update to Python 2.7 would have removed aptdaemon, python-aptdaemon and mintinstall for me. I managed to fully perform the update without removing any packages, but it meant having to downgrade aptdaemon and python-aptdaemon to the version from the Debian repo. The version in the Mint repo while newer, depends on a version of Python earlier than 2.7. Only mintinstall depends on those two packages on my system, so I don't see much of an issue if it plays up due to the downgrade.

Anyway, so far so good.

This worked for me. Thanks!

I F'd up. I saw the 2.7.2-8 python, thought a new version hit the debian repo, and installed it. But 2.7.2-8 has the same problem as 2.7.2-7.

In any event, I did a sudo leafpad /etc/apt/sources.list and commented out the mint repo:

Code: Select all

# deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org testing main non-free
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable non-free main

I reloaded synaptic. Then I installed aptdaemon and python-aptdaemon. Then I re-established the mint repo. Then I reloaded synaptic again. Then I installed mintinstall.

All is good except that I also pushed through xorg updates, so libcairo got upgraded. That's not the end of the world since I'm using mscorefonts with alaising. But my login screen is debian fonts anti-alaised ugly. Oh well. I'll deal with it. zz's warning about holding back updates put the fear of the debian rolling distro god in me

[zerozero]

well, this is not a breakage warning (not yet) gnome-shell entered sid last night
so it means that, if everything goes well, in 10 days it will be in testing;
it's not the "end of the world as we know it" (far from it), but we can't deny that the shell is controversial, so at this point i see 3 options (the ones i tested - fell free to add others)

1 - finally, let's do it

2 - #apt-get install xfce4, then look for some extras bits in synaptic like xfce4-goodies, logout, choose xfce in gdm and forget that gnome thing

3 - #apt-get install kde-standard, choose kdm when asked, same as above about choosing the default session, enjoy

[vicshrike]

Thanks for the warning zero, have been checking out xfce lately, a positive experience, exciting times are coming towards us!

[xircon]

Or just use Compiz or Openbox (with xcompmgr for compositing) as your window manager and add the bits you like from Gnome/XFCE/KDE. I am going to write a how-to for Compiz (there I have said it so now I will have to do it ).

I have just about got everything working (except the current batch of updates want to kill avant-window-navigator, stolen from the Maverick PPA).

[gavinhc]

2 - #apt-get install xfce4, then look for some extras bits in synaptic like xfce4-goodies, logout, choose xfce in gdm and forget that gnome thing

Alternately, if you want to use LMDE xfce, without doing a reinstall from the new ISO, #apt-get install mint-meta-xfce will pull in any packages required and set it up with all the Minty configuration and settings.

[ods_bswr]

Hello,

I installed LMDE (201109) yesterday and had it configured pretty fine until I installed about 400 updates today. I don't have a lot of experience with reading the thread first before updating, so I just clicked "update" and hummed along. I've an amd64 system with an AMD Radeon HD 6470M card (or something like that, it's a laptop model). I installed the AMD proprietary drivers today before the update, which was probably a mistake. I downloaded them from the AMD site, perhaps you know it, you get a 70M auto-installer. Acceleration worked afterwards, I tested it with glxgears.

Well anyway today I installed the update and at the next reboot, the screen was black when the login should have come. Now I've read this thread and discovered that this is not uncommon with the prop. ATI & Nvidia drivers. I tried some workarounds like deleting xorg.conf (didn't work, I just get a flickering line instead of the login afterwards) and I tried to do the thing recommended by Lewdsqurirrel (the -

type "cd /var/cache/apt/archives"
- type "sudo dpkg -i libgl1-mesa-glx_7.10.2-3_i386.deb"
- type "sudo dpkg -i libglu1-mesa_7.10.2-3_i386.deb"
- type "sudo dpkg -i mesa-common-dev_7.10.2-3_i386.deb"
- type "sudo dpkg -i xserver-common_2%3a1.10.2-1+wheezy1_all.deb"
- type "sudo dpkg -i xserver-xorg-core_2%3a1.10.2-1+wheezy1_i386.deb"
- type "sudo dpkg -i libgl1-mesa-dri_7.10.2-3_i386.deb"
- type "sudo dpkg -i libgl1-mesa-dev_7.10.2-3_i386.deb"

Once it's done, you can reinstall the Nvidia packages by typing:
- sudo apt-get install libgl1-nvidia-alternatives
- sudo apt-get install libgl1-nvidia-glx
- sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx

thing, but that didn't work) - my system is too new and I don't have the old versions of the packages. So I added deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free to sources.list which I read in another post and tried messing around, but to no avail. The I tried (probably this is nonsense) apt-get update && apt-get upgrade or something like that, problem: I'm doing this from the "LMDE rescue mode" from GRUB or something like that and have no network at all, or so it seems.

Do you have anything more to recommend before I install the system from scratch? And perhaps some recommendations after I install it from scratch (which packages I ignore at all cost when updating)? I'd be rather glad if I didn't have to do everything from scratch again, but if I can't do it any other way, I'll do it.

I also understand that most of you have NVIDIA cards, for which the problem seems to be fixed now; well I still got it. Does anyone have experience with AMD cards and this problem?

I'd appreciate both advice and compassion

[ghostdawg]

It looks like some Gnome 3 dependencies are coming in now.
Since I was able to get a clean full-upgrade a couple of days ago, now I'm seeing this:

Code: Select all

aptitude full-upgrade
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  gnome-font-viewer{ab} libaacplus2{a}
The following packages will be upgraded:
  apache2.2-bin baobab binutils bluez cups-pdf ffmpeg
  gir1.2-pango-1.0 gnome-dictionary gnome-screenshot
  gnome-search-tool gnome-system-log gnome-utils gnome-utils-common
  libavcodec53 libavdevice53 libavfilter2 libavformat53 libavutil51
  libgdict-1.0-6 libofa0 libpango1.0-0 libpango1.0-dev
  libpostproc51 libreadline5 libswscale2 libupower-glib1
  libwpg-0.2-2 media-player-info python-numpy upower vim-common
  vim-tiny
32 packages upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 26.9 MB/27.6 MB of archives. After unpacking 3,532 kB will be freed.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  gnome-font-viewer: Breaks: capplets-data (< 1:3.0.0) but 1:2.30.1-3 is installed.
                     Breaks: gnome-control-center (< 1:3.0.0) but 1:2.30.1-3 is installed.
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

     Remove the following packages:                       
1)     gnome-utils                                       

     Keep the following packages at their current version:
2)     gnome-font-viewer [Not Installed]                 



Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] q
Abandoning all efforts to resolve these dependencies.
Abort.

I'm not sure what is going on. All I want to do is remove gdm3 for now to see if it fixes my login screen session. When I try to purge gdm3, i get this:

Code: Select all

aptitude purge gdm3
The following packages will be REMOVED: 
  gdm3{p}
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 32 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 7,143 kB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]
E: I wasn't able to locate a file for the bluez package. This might mean you need to manually fix this package.
E: I wasn't able to locate a file for the bluez package. This might mean you need to manually fix this package.
E: Internal error: couldn't generate list of packages to download

Any ideas? If I need to do a new install, I'll be moving on to a different distro. It seems LMDE was fun while it lasted. I pretty much kept it updated so don't know why that login screen is giving me problems.

Thnx.

[xircon]

Try swapping to LightDM it is now in the testing repos. I have had it up and running for about a month, I really like it. If you don't like it, swap back with galternatives or update-alternatives.

:Edit:
Or just edit /etc/X11/default-display-manager and change it back to /usr/sbin/gdm3 from /usr/sbin/lightdm

[viking777]

ods_bswr

Here is something you can try (no guarantees though). Reinstall you ati driver but this time use sgfxi to do it. To do this you boot into LMDE and when you get to your broken/flickering screen you hit Ctl/Alt/F1 login and then (providing you have an internet connection) you type or copy/paste this:

Code: Select all

cd /usr/local/bin && wget -Nc smxi.org/sgfxi && chmod +x sgfxi && sgfxi

If you have an internet connection this will install the sgfxi script and it should even launch the program for you as well (if it doesn't reboot, Ctl/Alt/F1 and login again then manually type:

Code: Select all

sgfxi

The script will correctly install the latest ati driver for you. I don't know if this will do you any good because I don't have an ati graphics card.

And btw your assumption that graphics errors are fixed in nvidia systems is totally wrong. My nvidia system works because I manually prevent all the following packages from being upgraded:

xnest xserver-common xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
xserver-xorg-input-evdev xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-vesa

If the suggestion above doesn't work then you could try the same technique.

[ods_bswr]

@viking777 Thanks for the reply! Only I already installed the whole thing again from scratch. Seemed like the best thing to do.

But ***waitaminute*** I'm right now running the same [omitted] update again just without everything called *mesa* in it? I'm stopping it right now, which really hurts because the download has been dragging along at 40 kB/s for 2 hrs now. I thought mesa was the guilty one in this mess.

So your advice would be to exclude the Xorg packages & friends too? I hope that hindering X from updating itself will not wreck the system in a different way. Do you have experience with not updating Mesa and/or X?

EDIT I only though the Nvidia errors where fixed because the update "release note" state nochalantly that all errors in the update package 1 were fixed with package 2.

[ghostdawg]

Try swapping to LightDM it is now in the testing repos. I have had it up and running for about a month, I really like it. If you don't like it, swap back with galternatives or update-alternatives.

:Edit:
Or just edit /etc/X11/default-display-manager and change it back to /usr/sbin/gdm3 from /usr/sbin/lightdm

Ok, I'm now in LMDE by using lightdm. I do the update & full-upgrade and now getting this:

Code: Select all

saptech@ghostdawg ~ $ sudo aptitude full-upgrade
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  gnome-font-viewer{ab}
The following packages will be upgraded:
  bluez gnome-utils
2 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 239 kB/897 kB of archives. After unpacking 10.2 kB will be used.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  gnome-font-viewer: Breaks: capplets-data (< 1:3.0.0) but 1:2.30.1-3 is installed.
                     Breaks: gnome-control-center (< 1:3.0.0) but 1:2.30.1-3 is installed.
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

     Remove the following packages:                       
1)     gnome-utils                                       

     Keep the following packages at their current version:
2)     gnome-font-viewer [Not Installed]                 



Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] q
Abandoning all efforts to resolve these dependencies.
Abort.

I'm not sure what to do about gnome-font-viewer. When I try to reinstall it, it show--> gnome-font-viewer is not currently installed, but it is --> $ whereis gnome-font-viewer
gnome-font-viewer: /usr/bin/gnome-font-viewer.

When I run aptitude -f I get this message:

Code: Select all

$ sudo aptitude -f install gnome-font-viewer
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  gnome-font-viewer{b}
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 205 kB will be used.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  gnome-font-viewer: Breaks: capplets-data (< 1:3.0.0) but 1:2.30.1-3 is installed.
                     Breaks: gnome-control-center (< 1:3.0.0) but 1:2.30.1-3 is installed.
E: I wasn't able to locate a file for the bluez package. This might mean you need to manually fix this package.
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

     Remove the following packages:                                     
1)     capplets-data                                                     
2)     gnome-control-center                                             
3)     gnome-core                                                       

     Leave the following dependencies unresolved:                       
4)     gnome-panel recommends gnome-control-center                       
5)     gnome-system-tools recommends gnome-control-center (>= 1:2.10.1-1)
6)     mousetweaks recommends gnome-control-center                       


Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] q
Abandoning all efforts to resolve these dependencies.
Abort.

Anymore ideas?

Thnx.

[xircon]

I don't have gnome-font-viewer installed, though it looks like it is another victim of the headlong rush to gnome3:

Code: Select all

gnome-utils (3.0.1-5) unstable; urgency=low

  * debian/control.in:
    - Add Breaks/Replaces: capplets-data (<< 1:3.0.0) to gnome-font-viewer as
      the gnome-font-viewer.desktop file has been moved into the
      gnome-font-viewer package. Closes: #634942


If you don't use it remove it.

Still reading the rest of your post

Gnome-utils is a dummy package, so I would also get rid of it:

Code: Select all

This dummy package depends on all the tools bundled the GNOME
utilities:
 - baobab, a disk usage analyser
 - gnome-dictionary, a program which can look up the definition of words
   over the internet
 - gnome-search-tool, with which one can find files by name or content
 - gnome-system-log, a log viewing application
 - gnome-screenshot, a tool to take desktop screenshots and save them into
   a file
 - gnome-font-viewer, a tool to preview fonts

It can be safely removed from your system.

Gnome3 is going to cause us all some unnecessary work/sleepless nights

[viking777]

@viking777 Thanks for the reply! Only I already installed the whole thing again from scratch. Seemed like the best thing to do.

But ***waitaminute*** I'm right now running the same [omitted] update again just without everything called *mesa* in it? I'm stopping it right now, which really hurts because the download has been dragging along at 40 kB/s for 2 hrs now. I thought mesa was the guilty one in this mess.

So your advice would be to exclude the Xorg packages & friends too? I hope that hindering X from updating itself will not wreck the system in a different way. Do you have experience with not updating Mesa and/or X?

EDIT I only though the Nvidia errors where fixed because the update "release note" state nochalantly that all errors in the update package 1 were fixed with package 2.

I haven't had any problems with 'mesa' packages recently only xserver ones. The trouble is that there are probably multiple variations caused by this graphical bug, mine involves a slowdown of the graphical environment (eg you drag a window and it moves about 2 seconds behind the mouse, you type in a document and the letters appear about 6 characters after you typed them, that sort of thing). The solution to this problem for me was to exclude any package with the version number 2:1.11.1-1 from any update and to remain with version number 2:1.10.4-1 instead. I can't possibly say that this will work for you, as you are using an ati card, and in truth I couldn't even guarantee it would work with all Nvidia cards (in fact some aren't even affected by this bug). The purpose of my reply was to alert you to the fact that there is an alternative method of installing graphics drivers that you can try out if you are still having problems.

I am sorry I can't be more help than that.

And on another point, judging by what others have said it is not a good idea to update 'gnome-utils' either at the moment as the new version is part of gnome3 - for me this was held back automatically but that doesn't always happen, so watch out for that as well.

Oh and good luck with whatever you decide to try.