e2fsprogs, com_err, and ss blockers

GODhack · Guru Joined: 26 Jan 2008 Posts: 389 Location: Lithuania

And I believed that this kind of mess can occur only in 1-2 developers maintained distribution like ArchLinux. :roll:

Plz post here then everything will be 100% OK.

8mihi · Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2008 2:35 pm Post subject:

oops...

I see this topic still seems to floating around the 'top 10' whenever I hit the 'view last 24 hrs'. I have more experience to report...

Earlier this week, I mentioned about that Koboneil's suggestion worked for me...and it did ! (on my work box). That box is and continues to operate fine.

When I tried it (Koboneils's fix) on my amd64/mulitlib/'2008.0 desktop' at home, it broke it (will not boot, disks will not mount) and I'll be doing the liveboot/chroot/repair dance on that shortly. On my amd64/mulitlib/'2007.0 desktop' system, the fix last recently shown by col (using prefetching) above worked. What I think is not coming out in the posts (well, not clearly pronounced to me), was that trying to fix this issue "...may break your box..." as the ss and com_err can (easily) kill wget.

What I gather thus far, is it seems likely there more than one way to fix this issue, so noobs looking for the 'consensus fix' still seem to be waiting for the coveted solved label, but I sense this issue is more sublime into understanding lib deps and portage. I've not yet dissected why Koboneil's fix worked on one box and not on the other (as they are so similar in USE flags and such) and I've never had to do anything with the mit-krb5 issue, although some earlier posts suggested that working with that and package.keywords, worked for them.

So I'd say (for you noobs that may just be hitting this blockage issue during your weekend update), I'd suggest thus far the following:

Prefetch, Prefetch. Prefetch ! Before you do anything else. (Seems to me, prefetching will definitely increase your probability of success in resolving these blockages), or at minimum, can 'do no harm'). I'm not a portage expert, so a Dev, Vet, Guru, etc. would have to qualify that suggestion.

Here's a noob thought (not a complaint, please forgive if previously suggested): When a topic hits the forum that has, say a > 50% chance of being a box killer, it's too bad an Admin couldn't 'highlight post in red' / 'flag' the post, meaning that new/noobs users should read ALL the posts carefully. I'm a Gentoo noob, but a 'Slack' guy back into the 386/486/'kernel 2.0, install Slack from floppy' days, and I can recite/do the minimal install in my sleep (75+ Gentoo installs), use Gentoo at home and work for some years, and will have no trouble with repairing my 2008.0 box, but I see/sense some noobs will yet break their boxen on this topic. Also, I sense walking someone through the liveboot/chroot fix on the forums is tricky, depending on the language barrier, etc. If I have the time to document my 2008.0 'fix' I will.

For educational purps:
Question 1, 1a: Is there a consensus on what caused the blockages to appear ? Was it a developer library update 'oops' issue or a portage issue ? (as in, 'a corner case' that portage couldn't resolve or possible/actual portage bug). Just curious.

For future:
Question 2: Is there a comprehensive 'How To fix a busted Gentoo box' out there anywhere ? This ideal doc would start at the 'top' of the troubleshooting tree and work it's way down, starting with hardware (!) tests and checks, usable by the newest of noobs or working admins who may have more than a few installs under the belt and need a good reference for workplace documentation (or to train/help a coworker). And again, pardon if this exists and I've simply overlooked.

Lastly: I just discovered Pappy's kernel seeds (search the forums)! Pappy ! Very cool ! Hey, this Saturday might turn out to be fun (despite the 401k tanking last month

GODhack · Guru Joined: 26 Jan 2008 Posts: 389 Location: Lithuania

OMG ppl do not try to update stable systems while problem is not solved on testing!
Going trough this mess will give almost nothing. Better unmask something like Firefox 3 for fun.

8mihi · Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2008 4:28 pm Post subject:

GODhack · Guru Joined: 26 Jan 2008 Posts: 389 Location: Lithuania

No I will not shut the fu_ck up as you want.
This all topic with "solutions" how to badly damage your Gentoo setup is meaningless and only about wasting of time. emerge/portage is automated system not update blocker for funny solutions system.

You want solutions? Use LFS and stfu yourself.

RazielFMX · l33t Joined: 23 Apr 2005 Posts: 658 Location: NY, USA

Ok, ignoring the spam, here is what I did to upgrade e2fsprogs without any issue.

1) add the versions of e2fsprogs and e2fsprogs-lib to /etc/portage/package.mask
2) emerge -uDN world

This brings all your other packages up to date. Reboot if you had any kernel upgrades or something like that. If you had any X updates, make sure you restart X. Last thing you want is your X going to disk, seeing the bins have changed, and core dumping mid-upgrade. I did a reboot just to be safe.

Then, to deal with the blockers.

1) Remove the e2fs* from /etc/portage/package.mask
2) emerge -fuDN world (Fetch breaks, this step is KEY)
3) emerge -C sys-libs/ss sys-libs/com_err sys-fs/e2fsprogs
4) emerge -uDN world
5) (this cleans up orphaned packages) emerge -a --depclean
6) revdep-rebuild -p (I want to see what gets rebuilt before I let this do its thing)
7) (I didn't need this, but you might) revdep-rebuild

Hope this helps.

F_ · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 31 Dec 2006 Posts: 101

I don't know if this was pasted before or not, but this helped me:

https://bugs.gentoo.org/234907#c7

or http://bugs.gentoo.org/234907#c7 if you have problems with ssl.

Uncle_Psychosis · Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2004 Posts: 375

This is a real PITA...

Will these be resolved upstream by the devs or am I going to have to manually fix things? :cry:

RazielFMX · l33t Joined: 23 Apr 2005 Posts: 658 Location: NY, USA

8mihi · Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2008 8:19 pm Post subject:

RazielFMX: Thank You ! Clearly written 'here's my recipe'-type info people can actually try/test, with some decent commentary about the what/how/why. I would think anyone new to Gentoo would be able to work through your suggestion and succeed.

F_: Thank You ! I had not seen this link prior and sheds some light on the packages in question.

GODhack: yeah, ok, whatever. Your posts still make no sense at all, but perhaps we have a language barrier going here. I just didn't see where anything you posted was helpful on this issue. In fact, you seemed to be implying something about '...wasting of time...' and something else about 'Firefox 3'. Wha ?

Trouble I've sense on the topic is: folks are seeing the information about how unmerging ss and com_err (without first fetching) will break wget....AFTER they've broken wget (and cannot emerge, or even reboot in some cases). I am wondering if there shouldn't have been some degree of 'elevation' of this issue on the front page of the forum ? Was this just a unfortunate timing error in the manner in which some updates were released ?

Uncle_Psychosis · Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2004 Posts: 375

Uncle_Psychosis · Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2004 Posts: 375

d2_racing · Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2008 9:45 pm Post subject:

Hi, I have this inside mine :

RazielFMX · l33t Joined: 23 Apr 2005 Posts: 658 Location: NY, USA

srunni · Guru Joined: 26 Dec 2007 Posts: 365

Moriah

I just started some routine updates this evening. At one point or another, most of my boxes ran into the following:

notHerbert · Advocate Joined: 11 Mar 2008 Posts: 2228 Location: 45N 73W

If you can boot the CD, mount the partition(s), start the network and grab e2fsprogs and e2fsprogs-libs tarballs from here and untar them on / should get your boxes running.

On the others run emerge --fetch e2fsprogs e2fsprogs-libs before unmerging com_err and ss, then emerge -1 e2fsprogs e2fsprogs-libs

Moriah · Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2008 1:29 am Post subject:

Thanks!

That's pretty much what I thought. I will do it and post back here when done.

What I don't understand is how com_err relates to e2fsprogs and e2fsprogs-lib; isn't com_err a communications library error handler? What's that got to do with ext2 filesystems?
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notHerbert · Advocate Joined: 11 Mar 2008 Posts: 2228 Location: 45N 73W

It seems that it's all handled by libraries in e2fsprogs-libs now. After the upgrade there are no more com_err and ss packages on my box. That's why the new ones need to be fetched before unmerging the old ones. It's a snafu, and a lot of people had this same problem.

Stupendoussteve · n00b Joined: 06 Sep 2005 Posts: 72 Location: NE, USA

jtp755 · l33t Joined: 01 Sep 2003 Posts: 691 Location: USA

add =net-fs/nfs-utils-1.1.3 to your /etc/portage/package.mask file. I have the same problem. I addd that and then reran emerge -uaDNv world and everything is going well except mesa and xorg but that was easy to fix...
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Moriah · Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2008 2:15 am Post subject:

OK, I booted from a live CD with a 2.6.24-r5 kernel. This machine normally boots from a RAID1 mirror with LVM2. I got the RAID1 mirror assembled and the LVM2 started, so I was able to mount the reiserfs root filesystem.

Now I can't get the ethernet working. Apparently it needs me to load a driver. A quick lspci tells me that the NIC is a Via Technologies VT6102 "Rhine-II" rev 78. Now how do I determine which driver to load. The system on the RAID1 had the driver compiled into the kernel statically, so its no help.

I do not normally use modules except during the installation process. I built this system over 3 years ago, and have been just maintaining it since then. I did not even remember that it had a funky ethernet NIC, but its on the motherboard, so I don't want to change it.
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bunder · Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2008 2:19 am Post subject:

cyrillic · Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2008 2:23 am Post subject:

My Rhine-II NIC uses these modules.

ade05fr · Apprentice Joined: 18 Sep 2006 Posts: 169

Up !

who can help me ?