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

Message

xcable · Post by **xcable** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 1:40 am

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 · Post by **drescherjm** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 1:46 am

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.

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# ls -al /usr/lib/libexpat.so.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Aug 18 20:27 /usr/lib/libexpat.so.0 -> libexpat.so

mno · Post by **mno** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 2:04 am

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.

mno · Post by **mno** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 2:05 am

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.

mno · Post by **mno** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 2:24 am

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.

padoor · Post by **padoor** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 2:47 am

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.

Akkara · Post by **Akkara** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 3:00 am

I suggest waiting until it's fixed.

From what I understand, the breakage is because expat's API had been changed with version 2.0.

Which means you'll need to deal with the breakage and rebuilding sooner or later anyway since it's not something that can be fixed, but more like growth pains in the evolution of software.

mno · Post by **mno** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 3:03 am

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

Telexen · Post by **Telexen** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 3:17 am

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 · Post by **drescherjm** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 3:31 am

The proper way to fix all these dependencies is through revdep-rebuild...

Agreed.

Although, I think I will just downgrade if it causes me any problems as I do not want to rebuild MythTV until I have to being that I am running a svn snapshot from mid February.

AllenJB · Post by **AllenJB** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 8:51 am

drescherjm wrote: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.
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# ls -al /usr/lib/libexpat.so.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Aug 18 20:27 /usr/lib/libexpat.so.0 -> libexpat.so

Do not do this. There is a reason the filenames changed (the APIs are incompatible) and doing this may solve some problems in the short term but will cause more problems in the long term. Please rebuild your packages properly.

swimmer · Post by **swimmer** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 9:10 am

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

Please note that the soname of the library changed!
If you are upgrading from a previous version you need
to fix dynamic linking inconsistencies by executing:
revdep-rebuild -X --library libexpat.so.0

If you do what the devs say in this valuable peace of information which is part of the installation you'd have *no* problems at all!

Sorry to be harsh

swimmer

wjb · Post by **wjb** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 10:59 am

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

swimmer · Post by **swimmer** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 11:10 am

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

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PORTAGE_ELOG_CLASSES="warn error log"
PORTAGE_ELOG_SYSTEM="save mail"
PORTAGE_ELOG_MAILURI="<YOUR_MAIL_ACCOUNT> <YOUR_SMTP_SERVER>"
PORTAGE_ELOG_MAILFROM="<YOUR_MAIL_ACCOUNT>"

Sorry again

swimmer

xcable · Post by **xcable** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 2:54 pm

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 · Post by **drescherjm** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 3:00 pm

The real problem is that you guys don't read

The problem is that doing an

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emerge -uDv system

and upgrading 30 or so packages you will never see this message.

drescherjm · Post by **drescherjm** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 3:01 pm

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.

I have the same experience with that.

drescherjm · Post by **drescherjm** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 3:05 pm

Please rebuild your packages properly.

I took everyones warning and I ended up masking the new version and downgrading expat as nothing I currently have on my system (including kde-3.5.7 which I have had installed for many months) needs the new version.

xcable · Post by **xcable** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 3:53 pm

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

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checking for GTK+ - version >= 2.4.4... no
*** Could not run GTK+ test program, checking why...
*** The test program failed to compile or link. See the file config.log for the
*** exact error that occured. This usually means GTK+ is incorrectly installed.
configure: error: Test for GTK+ failed. See the file 'INSTALL' for help.

!!! Please attach the following file when filing a report to bugs.gentoo.org:
!!! /var/tmp/portage/media-gfx/gimp-2.2.17/work/gimp-2.2.17/config.log

!!! ERROR: media-gfx/gimp-2.2.17 failed.
Call stack:
  ebuild.sh, line 1632:   Called dyn_compile
  ebuild.sh, line 983:   Called qa_call 'src_compile'
  ebuild.sh, line 44:   Called src_compile
  gimp-2.2.17.ebuild, line 108:   Called econf '--disable-default-binary' '--with-x' '--e                   nable-mmx' '--enable-sse' '--disable-altivec' '--enable-gtk-doc' '--enable-python' '--ena                   ble-print' '--with-libpng' '--with-libjpeg' '--with-libexif' '--disable-mp' '--without-li                   btiff' '--without-libmng' '--without-aa' '--without-lcms' '--without-gtkhtml2' '--with-li                   brsvg' '--disable-debug'
  ebuild.sh, line 586:   Called die

!!! econf failed
!!! If you need support, post the topmost build error, and the call stack if relevant.
!!! A complete build log is located at '/var/tmp/portage/media-gfx/gimp-2.2.17/temp/build                   .log'.

FING RIDICULOUS!!!! I've been a Gentoo user for over 5 years now, but Ubuntu is looking better and better every day.

--
heath

Ladynik0n · Post by **Ladynik0n** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 4:21 pm

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

??

AllenJB · Post by **AllenJB** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 4:24 pm

Ladynik0n wrote:localhost ~ # revdep-rebuild -X --library libexpat.so.0
-su: revdep-rebuild: command not found

??

revdep-rebuild is in the gentoolkit package, which isn't installed by default.

Personally I think the trick here was to know the expat update was coming... I've now upgraded 2 systems using the following with only 1 problem (mysql-gui-tools wouldn't build for an apparently unrelated reason, but it's a package that's marked testing and I don't really use, so I removed that for now):

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emerge -1a expat
revdep-revbuild -- -vat
emerge -uDNvat world

(As a side note, I'm currently using the very latest ~arch version of gentoolkit)

Ladynik0n · Post by **Ladynik0n** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 4:34 pm

ty allen

jlh · Post by **jlh** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 6:31 pm

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 · Post by **01mf02** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 11:09 pm

jlh wrote: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.

++

I didn't have problems with revdep-rebuild either - it took some time, but I'm willing to pay that price for the knowledge what's going on with the system - look, you probably wouldn't even know there existed an expat package if it didn't break your stuff sometimes.

mno · Post by **mno** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 11:14 pm

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