Re: Fedora 12 - compiz ruined by updates

On Saturday 26 June 2010 06:11 in alt.os.linux, somebody identifying as
Ohmster wrote...

(Off topic, but is there anyway to pause the top screen so I can
examine or capture it then allow it to resume again?)

Not for an actual undetermined pause length, but you can change the
refresh rate of the output using "d" or "s". Another useful feature is
that you can use it in non-interactive batch mode - see the man page -
which allows you to redirect the output to a file.

I was going to show top with only glxgears now with system lock, but
when I tried to move cube, computer is now locked up for good. A
hard reset is all that will work now. Yep, my putty term window is
frozen as well. ...you get the idea.

Always attempt to use the "magic SysRq keys" before pressing the
reset button if you have access to the machine's local console.
Userspace may be locked up, but System Requests are sent straight to
the kernel, and so you may still be able to shut down the machine
cleanly.

What is "magic SysRq keys"? You mean Alt-Ctl-Delete or
Alt-Ctl-Backspace? They have no effect at all.

No, those are userspace-interpreted key combinations, both of which
should "log you out of X" - the latter being rather brutal.

The "magic SysRq keys" are sent straight to the kernel instead. You
Press and hold the "Alt" key and the "PrtSc|SysRq" key together, and
while holding them, type the following sequence of keys, with about two
seconds in between each keypress: "R", "S", "E", "I", "U", "B" - a
useful mnemonic for them is to use the first character of each word in
the phrase "Raising Skinny Elephants Is Utterly Boring". ;-)

If the kernel is still healthily alive, the the above key sequence will
cleanly shut down and reboot your system.

You can learn more about the various System Requests from the file...

/path/to/kernel/sources/<kernel_version>/Documentation/sysrq.txt

The desktop is now useless and has been since a month after I
installed Fedora 12.

No one knows how to fix this, nothingI have tried works. The forums
for compiz, fedora, yield no answers, and the best reply I got was
"Send a bug report to Fedora". I tried and if something is not quite
right about the report, you cannot send it. I just did a "sudo yum
update" and everything updated, must be 200 updates including the
kernel, kmod- nvidia, and Xorg, I think. Still my desktop is broken.

That may be the result of the unclean shutdown. Sometimes this
leaves certain configuration files in an incoherent state, even if
you have a journaled filesystem.

File system is 83 ext3 for boot, 8e Linux LVM for rest of drive on
/dev/sda. I have my old drive mounted so I can pick stuff from it as
/dev/sdb, same setup, 83 ext3 for boot, 8e Linux LVM for rest of
drive, although I no longer boot from that 200Gb drive. I now boot
from the 400Gb drive first mentioned. Both IDE drives mounted as LVM
by way of Fedora install.

LVM is not a filesystem; it's an additional layer on top of the physical
partitioning layout in which you create logical volumes, which you then
must format with a filesystem type. ;-)

But anyway, as Fedora, RedHat and CentOS are quite pedantic in not
letting you install the system on anything other than ext2 or ext3 (and
now possibly ext4) - which is one of the reasons why I hate these three
distros - you probably have ext3 on those logical volumes as well.

I now have the Fedora 13 DVD, will an upgrade install fix this?

I don't really know, because I always prefer doing a clean install
myself.

I could not agree more, but the configs you see. I am job hunting and
it is HELL. I just do not have the time to redo Linux all over again
with everything I have done to it from scratch.

That's why you have to make backups of all important data. ;-) Backup
your "/home", your "/var" and your "/etc". You can sort out what to
restore later on from the storage device containing the backups.

If so, will it just break again at my first system update?

This is always possible, albeit that I don't think this would be the
case. I'm also a faithful believer in "If it isn't broken, don't try
to fix it". Some updates may contain bugfixes and security patches
which you might need, but you surely don't need any fixes for
software you never use. Also bear in mind that updates and upgrades
often fix known bugs by replacing them with unknown ones. ;-)

I hear ya, dude. I long for an Enterprise version of Linux where I can
just "set it and forget it" like Ron Popiel, [...

I don't even know who that is. ;-)

...] but I think Fedora is not the distro for that sort of thing [...

No, it isn't. It's the testbed for the next RedHat/CentOS, and it's
pretty "cutting edge". If you want stability, then I'd recommend
either RHEL or CentOS - to stay with the recipe - or perhaps Debian
stable or Slackware.

...] and I am hooked on it because I like yum handling all of the
dependencies and updates. No more tarballs please!

Most distributions do without tarballs, but Debian is probably the
distro with the largest software repositories. It does however not
use .rpm packages or "yum", but instead it has .deb packages
and "apt-get", which has for a long time already been offering that
which "yum" only started offering a few years ago.

That said, again, if you want to stick to "yum", then there's RedHat or
CentOS. The latter is a freely downloadable version of RedHat from
which some (but not all) of the proprietary stuff was removed.

I dread a clean install as all of my servers, httpd.conf, FTP,
alias, mail settings, dovecot, etc. will all have to be done over
again.

Not if you back them up. And if you have an FTP repository, then
having that on a separate partition allows you to save it across
reinstallations, as you don't have to format that partition if you
don't want to.

I have two drives in the box, I can always back up stuff but where to
begin backing up all configs?

The safest thing would be to back up the entire "/etc", yes -
plus "/var" and "/home" - and then after the clean install of the newer
distro, you can sort out which old configuration files to restore.

Unless you mean backup the entire disk, with what, ghost?

No, backing up the entire disk isn't necessary, and by all means, stay
away from Norton Ghost. I've seen it mess up badly. It may be a
useful thing in Windows - I don't really know, because I don't do
Windows - but don't touch a GNU/Linux hard disk with a Windows tool.

Just for future reference, GNU/Linux has much better tools for copying
an entire disk sector by sector...: Read the man page on "dd", for
instance... ;-)

What is the best way out of this?

I would recommend backing up all your important data - which you
should always do anyway - and doing a fresh install with Fedora 13.

Yeah, sigh. I will backup with ghost I guess, try the upgrade to see
what happens, and then probably go clean. Dam.

No, no, no. Stay away from Norton Ghost.

Can or should I just shitcan compiz as not ready for prime time and
give it up?

Compiz *is* ready for prime time. The problem however may be (and
usually is) the proprietary video driver. I strongly suspect that to
be the case.

I just installed the latest nvidia driver right from nvidia. Found
that if I put a symling in /usr/src/ I can now run the nvidia
installer instead of depending on kmod-nvidia rpm releases. The driver
made no difference and I thought it really would, too.

Okay, so then it's something else that's broken. Possibly X.Org or
Compiz itself.

How can I get rid of it? I tried to uninstall it with yum and
thought I was successful but the problem remains and compiz is still
here.

Probably because something else relied upon it, according to your RPM
database. I don't use Fedora myself, but you should check the "man
page" on "yum" for options on how to check for dependencies.

Yeah, I will have to put a little more time into it. Problem is, I
really do not *want* to give up compiz because it is so f*cking cool.

Just for the record, KDE 4's native window manager (Kwin) has all the
effects Compiz Fusion has. You might want to check out KDE some
day. ;-)

Sorry for the "wordy" post. Please help.

For what it's worth... ;-)

It was worth plenty. Thank you very, very much. Will update you when I
try new things if interested. Thank you again for your very helpful
reply.

You're welcome. ;-)

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)
.

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