Really rolling?

Archived topics about LMDE 1 and LMDE 2
Fred

Re: Really rolling?

Post by Fred »

It will be interesting to see how all this washes out when big infrastructure changes start coming down. It is a very bad idea to have X and a DE running when X or the DE is being updated. All kinds of bad things can happen. This doesn't happen very often in testing but it does happen.

In my opinion, if the criteria is to do all upgrades in X GUIs then infrastructure changes, ( dist-upgrade), will have to be held back to avoid wholesale breakage at some point. Over time it will no longer be testing but an earlier subset of testing that becomes stagnate. This will require a reinstall of a later snapshot to catch back up. It is then no longer a rolling release.

aptosid, the old sidux, advocates turning off X and dropping to run level 3 to do dist-upgrade. I have found that this is good practice in testing as well as sid. Updating with h2s smxi, which forces you to be in run level 3, makes for a pretty reliable way to stay current if you use it on a regular basis. It is not a pretty GUI though so it remains to be seen if it will be accepted by Clem for Mint's user demographic.

Time will tell. :-)

Fred
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Re: Really rolling?

Post by tdockery97 »

Hmm...might have missed it earlier, but Mint Update by default does dist-upgrade. So you really have the choice of using GUI or terminal. Another question I have been meaning to ask: How many are doing the truly rolling thing by using the Sid repositories instead of Testing?
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Re: Really rolling?

Post by MALsPa »

tdockery97 wrote:Hmm...might have missed it earlier, but Mint Update by default does dist-upgrade. So you really have the choice of using GUI or terminal.
I missed that, too. How did you find that out? Just curious.
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Re: Really rolling?

Post by tdockery97 »

Open Mint Update: Edit>Preferences>Update Method. There is a box for dist-upgrade that is checked.
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msuggs

Re: Really rolling?

Post by msuggs »

tdockery97 wrote:Open Mint Update: Edit>Preferences>Update Method. There is a box for dist-upgrade that is checked.
This isn't the same as dist-upgrade with a terminal and apt. The level 4 and 5 updates still won't be applied unless you choose to include them in the preferences.
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Re: Really rolling?

Post by tdockery97 »

omns wrote:The level 4 and 5 updates still won't be applied unless you choose to include them in the preferences.
I do. But I still find it quicker to open terminal and type sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade. Just thought it was interesting that the update manager was set up to do dist-upgrade.
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Fred

Re: Really rolling?

Post by Fred »

tdockery97 wrote:
Just thought it was interesting that the update manager was set up to do dist-upgrade.
I can understand that. You just about have to do regular dist-upgrade in order to keep up. 90% of the time, in testing, this wouldn't be a problem but when major infrastructure changes come in, especially X org updates, major breakage can occur if X is running. Plus, somebody is going to have to watch very close to catch when this happens so they can hold them before they do a lot of damage to people that are doing it with X running.

Don't get me wrong, I think, and have for a long time, that a Debian based Mint is a great idea. I just can't quite see yet how some of these rollings issues are going to workout if it has to all be done through an X DE based GUI.

But then again I am just an old dumb country boy. I am sure the quicker and fleeter among us will work it all out. :-)

Fred
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Re: Really rolling?

Post by tdockery97 »

I can understand your reasoning Fred. Fortunately I use Clonezilla every week on my LMDE installation so that I can never really have irreversible damage. I had thought about using smxi outside of X, but wpasupplicant for connecting to wifi outside of X seems overly complicated to me. After dropping out of X I can bring up a terminal, but I can't get my internet access up. :(
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The Garage

Re: Really rolling?

Post by The Garage »

Use Wicd or Ceni for bringing up wireless at boot. Both keep wireless running if X is killed. Wicd should be in the debian repos, but Ceni you'd have to get from aptosid.
craigevil

Re: Really rolling?

Post by craigevil »

Fred wrote:It will be interesting to see how all this washes out when big infrastructure changes start coming down. It is a very bad idea to have X and a DE running when X or the DE is being updated. All kinds of bad things can happen. This doesn't happen very often in testing but it does happen.

In my opinion, if the criteria is to do all upgrades in X GUIs then infrastructure changes, ( dist-upgrade), will have to be held back to avoid wholesale breakage at some point. Over time it will no longer be testing but an earlier subset of testing that becomes stagnate. This will require a reinstall of a later snapshot to catch back up. It is then no longer a rolling release.

aptosid, the old sidux, advocates turning off X and dropping to run level 3 to do dist-upgrade. I have found that this is good practice in testing as well as sid. Updating with h2s smxi, which forces you to be in run level 3, makes for a pretty reliable way to stay current if you use it on a regular basis. It is not a pretty GUI though so it remains to be seen if it will be accepted by Clem for Mint's user demographic.

Time will tell. :-)

Fred
I have upgraded in X for six years with absolutely no problems. Total BS.

You should know the sidux/aptosid devs aren't right in the head. Not only do they spout crap like not upgrading in X, they say not to use aptitude which is the recommended Debian package management tool.

Feel free to read http://sidux.com/index.php?module=Wikula&tag=DisasterEN for a good laugh. There is not a shred of truth in that entire post.

So please don't spout that drivel on other forums.

If you want an idea about how sidux/aptosid is perceived by people that run Debian.
Debian User Forums • View topic - Trouble in the land of sidux
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... lit=+sidux
Fred

Re: Really rolling?

Post by Fred »

craigevil,
There is not a shred of truth in that entire post.
So please don't spout that drivel on other forums.
You seem have your pantyhose in a knot don't you? You sure you aren't letting your own prejudice against aptosid/sidux color your opinion? :-)

I have used Debian sid, and testing, for a while now and I can assure you that it is possible to break your desktop or X on some infrastructure changes. KDE 4 integration comes to mind. If you have been getting away with it for years, more power to you but it can and does happen. On a regular basis in experimental, much less often in sid, and occasionally in testing, depending on your hardware.

I do agree that the forum at aptosid/sidux is excessively hostile and unforgiving, which is why I don't participate over there. But that doesn't diminish the work that their devs have done. The installer is excellent in my opinion. The documentation is excellent compared to most distros. ceni is the best wireless configuration utility I know of. No fancy GUI but clean and simple. H2s smxi is very good and it was a dumb move for sidux to go ballistic over it, but that doesn't affect me one way or the other. I take the good and leave the bad. That simple.

As far as me spouting my drivel is concerned, you need to get a better grip on reality. Your time in the Debian forums is showing. Those that choose to give my comments weight will do so, others are perfectly free to ignore me. When Clem asks me to stop posting my drivel and leave I will happily do so. Until then watch your mouth and mind your manners.

Enjoy your day. :-)


@tdockery97

I have had very good luck with ceni. You might want to give it a try, however I must say it does sound a bit odd that dropping out of X would take out your wireless. But I also haven't looked at or used network manager so I have no idea what it actually does.

In your sources list put: "deb http://aptosid.com/debian/ sid main fix.main" without the quotes. Open a terminal and type:

apt-get update && apt-get install ceni

You should then be able to open ceni from your menu. It will open in a terminal window. make sure the terminal window is pretty good size because it will not run if the terminal is set too small. I think if you look at the options you will figure it out but if you look at the link below you will see some helpful instructions. Be sure to comment out the repo you put in above and do another apt-get update.

http://manual.aptosid.com/en/internet-c ... cardconfig

Enjoy. :-)

Fred
craigevil

Re: Really rolling?

Post by craigevil »

WiFi - Debian Wiki : http://wiki.debian.org/WiFi

wicd works just fine and won't lose connection out of X.

Ask anyone at forums.debian.net or in the #debian irc channel. Not a single person that knows what they are talking about will tell you to drop out of X to upgrade. They will however tell you to use aptitude instead of apt-get.

I ran sidux from the start, actually I converted a Kanotix install to sidux using h2's first script; and only dropped it last yr when all hell broke loose in the irc channel. sidux is the only Debian based distro that I know of that doesn't use the recommended Debian tools, and that tells you not to upgrade in X.

The beauty of Debian is that you can always, repeat after me always upgrade while still in X. If you are running an app then it might stop and restart it. but other than that it is not an issue. I started with Woody and have ran Debian sid ever since, I have always ran apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade while still in X and in kde(until kde4 then I switched to lxde) and not once have I had any issues.

I suggest reading the Debian docs, go through this thread and read read read:
http://forum.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=141&t=57144

sidux/aptosid is NOT Debian and they do not do things the Debian way, granted LMDE isn't Debian either. But at least here they aren't telling people to do things differently than the way Debian does things.
runningman

Re: Really rolling?

Post by runningman »

well now i`m confused :wink: Craigevil you say aptitude is the debian way but the you say you have apt-get distupgraded for years.So is it apt-get or aptitude??
mfdemicco

Re: Really rolling?

Post by mfdemicco »

tdockery97 wrote:
omns wrote:The level 4 and 5 updates still won't be applied unless you choose to include them in the preferences.
I do. But I still find it quicker to open terminal and type sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade. Just thought it was interesting that the update manager was set up to do dist-upgrade.
Level 4 & 5 packages are supposed to be unsafe and dangerous, respectively. I presume apt-get dist-upgrade installs them anyway? What makes them dangerous?
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Re: Really rolling?

Post by tdockery97 »

Possible changes in video, etc. that could break things. I'm sure it's all fixable, just inconvenient. When I tried Sid it borked my video. Rather than try to fix it I just reinstalled my Clonezilla backup and went back to testing. But level 4 & 5 in Testing are probably not as unstable as Sid.
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Fred

Re: Really rolling?

Post by Fred »

craigevil,

Not to belabor a point my friend but glancing at few of your posts, you seem to approve of and even use smxi. It is even mentioned in your sig. line. On the other hand you strongly advocate the so-called "Debian way," ie. aptitude with X running as the only acceptable way for one and all. Like runningman, I am slightly confused by your seeming lack of consistence on this issue.

You do know that smxi runs in init 3, (X shut down), as root with the default upgrade method using apt don't you? It breaks all your own rules as you so eloquently stated them above. I am beginning to wonder if you indeed practice what you preach or are just towing the company line, so to speak.

Enjoy life, it is too short to do otherwise. :-)

Fred
Fred

Re: Really rolling?

Post by Fred »

tdockery97wrote:
Possible changes in video, etc. that could break things. I'm sure it's all fixable, just inconvenient. When I tried Sid it borked my video.
Most likely a new kernel was installed. This would require recompiling the graphics kernel module for the new kernel, if the driver you are using is non-free. If you use smxi this is a breeze to do. It takes all the work out of it. It even picks the right driver for you, 99% of the time.

Fred
craigevil

Re: Really rolling?

Post by craigevil »

Fred wrote:craigevil,

Not to belabor a point my friend but glancing at few of your posts, you seem to approve of and even use smxi. It is even mentioned in your sig. line. On the other hand you strongly advocate the so-called "Debian way," ie. aptitude with X running as the only acceptable way for one and all. Like runningman, I am slightly confused by your seeming lack of consistence on this issue.

You do know that smxi runs in init 3, (X shut down), as root with the default upgrade method using apt don't you? It breaks all your own rules as you so eloquently stated them above. I am beginning to wonder if you indeed practice what you preach or are just towing the company line, so to speak.

Enjoy life, it is too short to do otherwise. :-)

Fred
The only thing I have used smxi; for in a long time, is installing nvidia driver. Since h2 explained how to use sgfxi I haven't used smxi at all.
The entire reason smxi runs outside of X is to install nvidia/ati drivers. Even h2 will tell you that.

And yes I know how smxi works, since h2 first came up with the script to convert a Kanotix install into sidux I have been using his scripts.
I am also one of the people that keeps an eye out for things that are broken, so they can be put on hold in smxi. Feel free to pop into the #smxi channel on irc.debian.org and say hi. :)

smxi along with the rest of h2's scripts are awesome, especially when you consider how many hours he puts in to just maintaining smxi and sgfxi.

I apologize if I came off as rude in previous posts, I am not a complete jackass most of the time.
Fred

Re: Really rolling?

Post by Fred »

craigevil wrote:
I apologize if I came off as rude in previous posts,...
Don't worry about it or even give it another thought. I am sure you wouldn't have to look far to find posts that I have made that were a little more aggressive than was called for. We all have our days. :-)

I agree about h2's scripts, though as I said, I do use smxi to dist-upgrade, most of the time now. I am lazy and his script always seems to be up-to-date about most issues. It is easy to tell he puts a lot of time into script maintenance. In fact, that is the thing that bothers me most. I just hope he is bringing someone else along so that when he grows tired of all the work required, smxi and his other scripts can live on. They are certainly a great asset to the Debian compatible community as a whole. I just wish Ubuntu had stayed closer to the mother-ship and maintained binary compatibility. But like the old saying goes, "wish in one hand and poopie in the other and see which hand gets full quicker." :-)

Fred
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Re: Really rolling?

Post by h2-1 »

In fact, that is the thing that bothers me most. I just hope he is bringing someone else along so that when he grows tired of all the work required, smxi and his other scripts can live on.
It's not up to me to provide a person to help, it's up to a person to provide themselves. I have no control over what other people do or don't do, if nobody helps, donates, or displays other signs of concrete material interest, then yes, of course, it grows less likely I'll spend the same types of time I've spent in the past, if people do display materialized manifestations of support/interest, then that is motivating, but i have very little say in making that happen or not, that's up to the people who would contribute in whatever way they find to do that.

smxi was significantly stabilized during the split with sidux, and doesn't require that much work unless I plan on adding a new feature, like the someday to come grub2 editing component, that will add Label handling to grub2, and maybe a simple grub boot image, and some other things I personally want.

LMDE/ikey exposed some nouveau handling issues in sgfxi that have been corrected, all core changes in sgfxi are VERY time consuming, boring, unfun, and require extensive testing, but overall things are very stable in that script, it has had literally multiple hundreds of thousands of uses over the years, and most major issues have been handled, as I note with amusement every time I read a new how to handle nvidia/fglrx thread, which then starts to run through the various random steps that must be run to ensure a reliable install/uninstall experience. But stuff always changes, fglrx always lags the cutting edge, so that's life.

Craigevil sometimes forgets just how good he's become at running Debian, and that might now and then color some of his comments, but in general he knows what he's talking about, especially when it comes to running firefox etc. For myself, for new users who don't know all the packages they see scroll by in a big upgrade, it's safer to run du's out of X, and it's also not possible to kick out of X to reinstall non free drivers, which are, as craigevil says, the actual main reason I keep smxi running out of X for regular users. But any absolute rule is hardly required, but speaking for myself, back in Kanotix days, I saw many users blow up their desktops, and that empirical experience, not theory, was why one of the first features of smxi was to kick users out of X, shut it down, etc, that was one reason sidux got its success rate of normal but fairly smart people being able to run sid with some success. Not something I'd suggest by the way to most people, testing is easier in every way, especially if a fix repo is attached to it where you can stick stuff that never makes it into testing from sid.

Unlike too many strict debian guys, craig always retains an open mind about the stuff he uses, ie, he thinks for himself, and does what he likes and finds that works, like me, for example, he doesn't use the buggy and problematic iceweasel, but uses firefox instead, the real one. That's another feature I'll add to smxi one day, a direct mozilla group firefox downloader/installer, but it's a few steps and I'm lazy, heh.

With all this said, however, you have to keep in mind all of us were severely burned by our sidux experience, and we've all gotten somewhat passionately disgusted with pretty much everything involved in that convoluted world. I'll leave it at that because that mess is just everything that is bad about foss groupthink, but that's a large part of what lies behind craig's annoyance.

For the record, I use aptitude for all my systems because it's slightly better able to handle the complex scenarios I ask apt to handle, but there's no perfection.

However, I'll say this, lmde is closer to the spirit of what debian really is than that ATS nonsense, the true spirit of free software, as RMS said so well, lies in the freedom of the user to do what they want with their systems. ATS and those guys seem unable to grasp such principles, which is why their users have almost all left them behind, which is only right.

smxi, just fyi, has complete separate upgrade handling for stable/testing/sid, each has a back end that can handle different fixes, different live warnings, holds, etc, so if someone from lmde wants to learn about that come to irc.oftc.net (that's where #smxi is, not the url posted I think above)
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