[SOLVED] Update a one year old system

kj184050 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Sep 2021 Posts: 164 Location: Devon

Hi,
This is my first post here. I am using Gentoo on a workstation - so I am working on it. Due to this - I didn't have time to upgrade it properly. Now I ended up with a mess.
Can you please help me with this? I have 2 weeks of annual leave since today.
My plan is to fix this within this time... Can you please help me?
This is very important, because as I said this is my workstation. I perform scientific analyses on it everyday.
I can provide more information if you need.
I tried to upgrade packages one by one, no success.
I spend my previous annual leave (one week) to solve this - no success. I followed many forum threads, etc... I managed only to update portage and emerge...
Help very appreciated...
P.S. I coundn't remove this large gap in emerge output.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2021 3:43 pm Post subject:

kj184050,

Welcome to the fournns. A year old testing system.

Updating it is going to teach your more about Gentoo that you ever thought possible. It can be done but a reinstall will be much faster.

First, a few general points.

kj184050 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Sep 2021 Posts: 164 Location: Devon

@NeddySeagoon thank you for your reply

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2021 4:33 pm Post subject:

kj184050,

As you say, if its not broke ...

I was being lazy. I hoped that telling portage to try harder with --backtrack=250 it would find a depgraph solution but its not.

There are A few things to do.

kj184050 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Sep 2021 Posts: 164 Location: Devon

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2021 6:43 pm Post subject:

kj184050,

Where does

kj184050 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Sep 2021 Posts: 164 Location: Devon

figueroa · Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2021 3:56 am Post subject: Re: Update a one year old system

kj184050 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Sep 2021 Posts: 164 Location: Devon

kj184050 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Sep 2021 Posts: 164 Location: Devon

OK.
Deeply investigating

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2021 2:14 pm Post subject:

kj184050,

kj184050 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Sep 2021 Posts: 164 Location: Devon

OK NeddySeagoon, thank you, but I have to admit I was lost in your tutorial again...

So I started to upgrade piece by piece from the blocked packages mentioned in the beginning.
What I managed to do:

upgraded libcrypt (intalled?) and glibc
upgraded sysvinit, xinit
commented
*/* PYTHON_TARGETS: -* python3_8 python3_9
*/* PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET: -* python3_8
in /etc/portage/package.use/python ... So you were right, it was not uncommented somewhere in the system
Now I have only ONE blocker after trying to upgrade world:

Code:

[blocks B ] x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers[-libglvnd(-)] ("x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers[-libglvnd(-)]" is hard blocking x11-base/xorg-server-1.20.10)

xorg version 20.10 is blocking display-manager-init ( As far as I remember, this is a new change in Gentoo)....

Code:

$: emerge -av xorg-server
These are the packages that would be merged, in order:
Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild N ] gui-libs/display-manager-init-1.0-r3::gentoo 0 KiB
[ebuild U ] x11-base/xorg-server-1.20.13-r1:0/1.20.13::gentoo [1.20.10:0/1.20.10::gentoo] USE="elogind ipv6 udev xorg -debug -dmx -doc -kdrive -minimal (-selinux) -suid -systemd -test% -unwind -xcsecurity -xephyr -xnest -xvfb (-libressl%) (-static-libs%) (-wayland%*)" 5,003 KiB
[blocks B ] <=x11-base/xorg-server-1.20.10 ("<=x11-base/xorg-server-1.20.10" is blocking gui-libs/display-manager-init-1.0-r3)

Now I can emerge gentoo-sources - 5.14

Hmm... I have a nouveau module for my old 5.10 kernel. It is blacklisted. I can try to switch to it, and upgrade the system without NVIDIA. I can lost X

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2021 4:47 pm Post subject:

kj184050,

Does adding

kj184050 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Sep 2021 Posts: 164 Location: Devon

NeddySeagoon I will try this and let you know.

Now I have to fix my X

I don't know why it has an error while trying to launch.
Will fix this now. I switched to nouveau - It was working only for Fluxbox. Now X won't start:) I have to fix this. + I have to remove nvidia-drivers. It has few dependencies to remove.

kj184050 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Sep 2021 Posts: 164 Location: Devon

As for now, the situation is strange. I managed to run Gnome on nouveau, but it is so slow. Delays are like in tens of seconds... It is not usable at all. I tried to switch to other desktops, no success.
Will try harder to fix this...

kj184050 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Sep 2021 Posts: 164 Location: Devon

Well... I gave up with nouveau...
First, Gnome was very, very slow. Then, I was not even able to launch it.
Switched back to nvidia proprietary driver

OK can someone please help me with NeddySeagoon's method?
I am trying to follow https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:NeddySeagoon/HOWTO_Update_Old_Gentoo#Plan_C
but I don't know even how to start.
I assume I have to start from Plan C, correct?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2021 6:21 pm Post subject:

kj184050,

That's correct but you are only going back a year or less, so you will not need the old repo. Git started in 2015 so you can start with Moving to GIt.

All the ebuilds that were ever in the ::gentoo repo since the switch to git in 2015 are still there.

Once you have a full clone of the git repo, you can replay the history of the repo commit by commit as it happened. This means that you can create the ::gentoo repo exactly as it was at any time you choose.
I only use a date in

kj184050 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Sep 2021 Posts: 164 Location: Devon

Thanks.

I am trying to follow your guide.
Starting from A.
First moving to git

Tony0945 · Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2021 1:20 pm Post subject:

kj184050 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Sep 2021 Posts: 164 Location: Devon

No, No, no. I n my case, it was just a real repo.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2021 3:58 pm Post subject:

kj184050,

kj184050 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Sep 2021 Posts: 164 Location: Devon

@NeddySeagoon,

But later, this license is not needed.
These python targets were removed by me - no issues now.
Now I can't decide from where to start.... Which date to choose...
It is starting to being a little messy.....
But I am willing to fix it

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2021 4:39 pm Post subject:

kj184050,

To be confident in the process, choose a checkout date where there is very little to update.
Then you will know what works.

Once you have done that. make a bigger step. The bigger the step, the more likely it is that you will have problems.
As your last update was in January, pick a date in June for the second step.
Exact dates are not important.

If an attempted @world update creates a lot of problems, do not try to solve them, back the git checkout date a few weeks.
You are trying to find the path that regular updates would have followed, if you had done them, but at the same time, using bigger steps to save CPU time.

If you really wanted to, you could do weekly steps but that should be too many steps. You need to find out what steps work by trial and error.

Yes it might be a bit messy but you will learn a lot.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

kj184050 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Sep 2021 Posts: 164 Location: Devon

Thank you again...
One week of annual leave left

I am still very confused. Please understand me

In your guide, you wrote not to have too many downgrades.
I am having a LOT of downgrades when I go back to Jan - where I stopped upgrading the system. Especially glibc, and python problems... You wrote not to downgrade glibc. In addition, emerge wants to downgrade emerge - which I think is not a good idea.

The last date when portage doesn't want to downgrade glibc is:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2021 5:09 pm Post subject:

kj184050,

Downcrading portage won't matter. You will get a portage that is contemporary with your git checkout date.

Portage will not let you downgrade glibc. Things break horribly when you do that.
You can use