• Mageia 8 Alpha 1 - Taskbar does not appear

    From Gilberto F da Silva@2:250/1 to All on Sun Jul 5 13:24:49 2020
    I installed Mageia 8 in order to detect errors and report them. I always use KDE. Unfortunately I was unable to do anything with Mageia 8.
    The taskbar does not appear. In previous versions I was able to get
    around this problem by creating taskbars. This solution did not work
    this time.

    Gilberto

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  • From Bit Twister@2:250/1 to All on Sun Jul 5 16:07:15 2020
    On Sun, 5 Jul 2020 09:24:49 -0300, Gilberto F da Silva wrote:
    I installed Mageia 8 in order to detect errors and report them. I
    always use KDE. Unfortunately I was unable to do anything with Mageia 8.
    The taskbar does not appear. In previous versions I was able to get
    around this problem by creating taskbars. This solution did not work
    this time.

    I hear your pain, but you will need to provide real information for
    anyone to help you.

    In my case, I had no taskbar or anything to speak of, because my login
    had an error and did not start my Desktop environment.

    I can highly recommend having two Desktop Environments, and two user
    accounts, if not more.

    On new installs, I create the first user as "normal". second user "junk"
    and my install_changes script adds the rest of the
    $ grep --count /accounts /etc/passwd
    21
    users on my system.

    I also have test accounts for each Desktop Environment
    $ cd /home ;ls
    bittwister gnome junk kde normal xfce
    normal account is for my default DE. and used for reference since
    nothing is changed. junk is used for install and later general user testing.

    In this case, I suggest video hardware would be helpful.
    If this was a clean install or upgrade.
    Does help to provide media used.
    Mageia-8-alpha1-Live-GNOME-x86_64
    Mageia-8-alpha1-Live-Plasma-x86_64
    Mageia-8-alpha1-Live-Xfce-i586
    Mageia-8-alpha1-Live-Xfce-x86_64
    Mageia-8-alpha1-i586
    Mageia-8-alpha1-x86_64-

    You need to be aware that Cauldron (Mageia 8) is very dynamic at this
    point in development.

    As a matter of fact, I find it handy to know if there is an upload in
    progress when my pull_updates script gets the latest updates.

    I suggest you need to keep an eye on https://pkgsubmit.mageia.org/
    to get a feel as to what may impact your install/upgrade.

    I also recommend getting a feel as to when the mirror of your choice
    gets those updates downloaded.

    Hopefully you have selected a mirror to pull/install updates.
    I also hope you have a script to pull down all updates to check for
    install, prior to actually doing the install.

    I find it handy to use the "script" command to display what is going
    on and have a log. Two examples follow, one to pull down/test the updates
    and one to do the actual package install.

    script -c "urpmi --downloader wget --wait-lock --replacefiles \
    --auto-update --auto --download-all --test" pull_updates.log


    script -c "urpmi --downloader wget --wait-lock --replacefiles \
    --auto-update --auto --download-all" install_updates.log


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  • From David W. Hodgins@2:250/1 to All on Sun Jul 5 21:36:33 2020
    On Sun, 05 Jul 2020 08:24:49 -0400, Gilberto F da Silva <gfs1989@gmx.net> wrote:

    I installed Mageia 8 in order to detect errors and report them. I always use KDE. Unfortunately I was unable to do anything with Mageia 8.
    The taskbar does not appear. In previous versions I was able to get
    around this problem by creating taskbars. This solution did not work
    this time.

    Was this with /home from a prior version? Have you ensured the latest updated packages have been installed?

    Note that with cauldron, updates replace the old version in the core repositories,
    rather then being added to the updates repos. That can cause problems if a repo
    syncs with the main Mageia repo in between the package being uploaded to the main
    repo, and the list of packages available on that repo (hdlist.cz file) being rebuilt, the adding of the repo may fail, and trying to install that package will fail. The workaround for that problem is to wait for the mirror to resync,
    which the tier 1 mirrors do, at least once per hour.

    Cauldron is harder to work with then the stable releases. Problems are expected.

    Regards, Dave Hodgins

    --
    Change dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org to davidwhodgins@teksavvy.com for
    email replies.

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  • From Gilberto F da Silva@2:250/1 to All on Mon Jul 6 03:42:40 2020
    David W. Hodgins wrote:
    Was this with /home from a prior version? Have you ensured the latest updated
    packages have been installed?

    Note that with cauldron, updates replace the old version in the core repositories,
    rather then being added to the updates repos. That can cause problems if
    a repo
    syncs with the main Mageia repo in between the package being uploaded to
    the main
    repo, and the list of packages available on that repo (hdlist.cz file)
    being
    rebuilt, the adding of the repo may fail, and trying to install that
    package
    will fail. The workaround for that problem is to wait for the mirror to resync,
    which the tier 1 mirrors do, at least once per hour.

    Cauldron is harder to work with then the stable releases. Problems are expected.

    When I started using Linux I used a common / home but I soon realized
    that there were differences between the configuration files of different versions. From then on, I started using different users for each
    distribution. If I'm using openSUSE Leap 15.2, the username is leap152,
    in Slackware it's slack142 and so on.

    The purpose of the alpha version is to serve for testing before the
    final version. I expected to be able to contribute by reporting some
    errors but with me it was not at all usable.



    --


    Gilberto F da Silva

    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: Aioe.org NNTP Server (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From Bit Twister@2:250/1 to All on Mon Jul 6 09:49:13 2020
    On Sun, 5 Jul 2020 23:42:40 -0300, Gilberto F da Silva wrote:


    When I started using Linux I used a common / home but I soon realized
    that there were differences between the configuration files of different versions.

    Very true.

    From then on, I started using different users for each
    distribution. If I'm using openSUSE Leap 15.2, the username is leap152,
    in Slackware it's slack142 and so on.

    My solution is to have /home on each install in /, with links of common
    files and whatnot to a common area. Some ls -l example snippets:

    .bash_profile -> /accounts/bittwister/.bash_profile
    .cron -> /accounts/bittwister/.cron
    Desktop -> /accounts/bittwister/Desktop
    Documents -> /accounts/bittwister/Documents
    mail -> /accounts/bittwister/mail
    .signature -> /accounts/bittwister/.signature
    .thunderbird -> /accounts/bittwister/.thunderbird


    The purpose of the alpha version is to serve for testing before the
    final version. I expected to be able to contribute by reporting some
    errors but with me it was not at all usable.

    Ah, but you have found a problem that should be examined.

    There have been times in the past where a Cauldron update broke my install.
    I wrote a pull_updates script to use xmessage to pop up a list of packages
    to be install, If I see packages about video, or large Display Environment packages I will rsync the install into a backup partition prior to doing
    the update.




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  • From Gilberto F da Silva@2:250/1 to All on Mon Jul 6 13:24:54 2020
    Bit Twister wrote:
    On Sun, 5 Jul 2020 23:42:40 -0300, Gilberto F da Silva wrote:


    When I started using Linux I used a common / home but I soon realized
    that there were differences between the configuration files of different
    versions.

    Very true.

    From then on, I started using different users for each
    distribution. If I'm using openSUSE Leap 15.2, the username is leap152,
    in Slackware it's slack142 and so on.

    My solution is to have /home on each install in /, with links of common
    files and whatnot to a common area. Some ls -l example snippets:

    .bash_profile -> /accounts/bittwister/.bash_profile
    .cron -> /accounts/bittwister/.cron
    Desktop -> /accounts/bittwister/Desktop
    Documents -> /accounts/bittwister/Documents
    mail -> /accounts/bittwister/mail
    .signature -> /accounts/bittwister/.signature
    .thunderbird -> /accounts/bittwister/.thunderbird

    I do it that way too with files that work well in any distribution like
    music files, torrents, emacs configuration, pdf documents etc. I try to
    keep the texts short here.

    --


    Gilberto F da Silva

    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: Aioe.org NNTP Server (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From TJ@2:250/1 to All on Thu Jul 9 12:07:17 2020
    On 7/5/20 10:42 PM, Gilberto F da Silva wrote:
    David W. Hodgins wrote:
    Was this with /home from a prior version? Have you ensured the latest
    updated
    packages have been installed?

    Note that with cauldron, updates replace the old version in the core
    repositories,
    rather then being added to the updates repos. That can cause problems
    if a repo
    syncs with the main Mageia repo in between the package being uploaded
    to the main
    repo, and the list of packages available on that repo (hdlist.cz file)
    being
    rebuilt, the adding of the repo may fail, and trying to install that
    package
    will fail. The workaround for that problem is to wait for the mirror
    to resync,
    which the tier 1 mirrors do, at least once per hour.

    Cauldron is harder to work with then the stable releases. Problems are
    expected.

    When I started using Linux I used a common / home but I soon realized
    that there were differences between the configuration files of different versions. From then on, I started using different users for each distribution. If I'm using openSUSE Leap 15.2, the username is leap152,
    in Slackware it's slack142 and so on.

    The purpose of the alpha version is to serve for testing before the
    final version. I expected to be able to contribute by reporting some
    errors but with me it was not at all usable.



    I don't believe David meant a "common" /home across versions and
    definitely across distros. I believe he was asking if you retained an
    existing /home from a previous version of Mageia when you installed.

    The former would be a BIG no-no. The latter, while it has its risks, not
    so much.

    Your solution, one /home but different users for each distro, while not
    quite as dangerous as the former, is considerably more dangerous than
    having a separate /home for each distro.

    TJ

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