Don't update expat!!!!! -- kills your system

xcable

Looks like several people are seeing problems with libexpat. Do NOT upgrade expat to 2.0.1; it breaks lots of packages. I suggest waiting until it's fixed.

--
heath

drescherjm · Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2007 8:46 pm Post subject:

I just had that and basically anything that used it would not run because libexpat.so.0 does not exist. As a quick and dirty fix I symlinked /usr/lib/libexpat.so.0 to /usr/lib/libexpat.so and at least MythTV ran fine which it did not start before because of this.

mno · Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2007 9:04 pm Post subject:

I'm just fighting it now. I upgraded. I found some suggestions that you should never symlink. It works, yes, but you've been warned.
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mno · Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2007 9:05 pm Post subject:

The proper way to fix all these dependencies is through revdep-rebuild... it is not a sweet solution, but it does fix the issues. Regardless, the only way to "fix" will be to re-build all packages that lookfor the .so.0 file.
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mno · Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2007 9:24 pm Post subject:

For more info, see this bug here: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=187730
It seems that it is natural for expat to cause breakage, just need to commit a bit of time to fixing the breakage afterwards.
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padoor · Veteran Joined: 29 Dec 2005 Posts: 2298 Location: india

seems like everyone does not get this problem
i have my gentoo uptodate . did not have a problem like this.
i have had this only in my 2006.1 installation.
in this new profile 2007.0 laptop i did not see any breakage of any package. with a lower hardware than my desktop where i had expat problem.
in this forum there is a way to make this problem less troublesome like copying libexpat.0 to /usr/local or something like that before upgrading libexpat.
this cant stop updating the system. the more older the system becomes it will be difficult to catch up with updates of today.
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Akkara · Guru Joined: 28 Mar 2006 Posts: 462

mno · Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2007 10:03 pm Post subject:

Also, see this sticky here: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-575655.html
It's a sticky for a reason

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Telexen · Apprentice Joined: 09 Oct 2005 Posts: 189

Wait until it's fixed?

You can fix it ...there's dozens of posts on the EXACT subject and they all contain the same fix.

drescherjm · Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2007 10:31 pm Post subject:

AllenJB · Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2007 3:51 am Post subject:

swimmer · l33t Joined: 15 Jul 2002 Posts: 919 Location: Netherlands

The real problem is that you guys don't read:

wjb · Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2007 5:59 am Post subject:

True, but this info got swamped by the kde 3.5.7 upgrades.

swimmer · l33t Joined: 15 Jul 2002 Posts: 919 Location: Netherlands

Nothing gets "swamped" if you set up elog usefully ...

xcable · Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2007 9:54 am Post subject:

The problem with rev-rebuild is that it's has never worked for me without me have to fix many many issues and baby sitting it. I don't have that kind of time.

And you don't know when you have to run rev-rebuild until you update and things start failing. Portage tells you need to rev-rebuild but only right after a particular package, and most of the time you don't see that message because there are other packages that are emerged after that particular library. This is a huge issue with portage and I'm really surprised this has not been "fixed". Please correct me if I'm wrong on this one.

heath

drescherjm · Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2007 10:00 am Post subject:

drescherjm · Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2007 10:01 am Post subject:

drescherjm · Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2007 10:05 am Post subject:

xcable · Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2007 10:53 am Post subject:

Re-emerging Gimp, because expat broke it....

Ladynik0n · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 11 Apr 2004 Posts: 75

localhost ~ # revdep-rebuild -X --library libexpat.so.0
-su: revdep-rebuild: command not found

??

AllenJB · Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2007 11:24 am Post subject:

Ladynik0n · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 11 Apr 2004 Posts: 75

ty allen

jlh · Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2007 1:31 pm Post subject:

I had only very small problems with that expat upgrade. Yes, I had to recompile like 30 packages, but only two of them didn't 'just work'; one problem solved itself by retrying later and the other had a trivial fix. If this type of babysitting (which - at least for me in this case - is not even very time-consuming) is already too much for you, you might want to use a distro that hides these things from the user. I don't know many other distros, but I'm sure at least some are easier on the user with those issues. For me, using gentoo really means to be a bit more low-level than other distros, which adds a great deal of flexibility and configurability, but - and that's the price you pay - you have to invested more time and do some babysitting when major upgrades happen. Just my two cents of course, you may disagree.

01mf02 · Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2007 6:09 pm Post subject:

mno · Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2007 6:14 pm Post subject:

Yes, but now that you know about the expat package, you probably wish that it didn't exist

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