Out of the frying pan...

[John]

On Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 03:34:26PM -0600, Andrew L. Gould wrote:
> On Friday 14 January 2005 02:12 pm, John wrote:
> > On Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 01:32:03PM -0600, Andrew L. Gould wrote:
> > > On Friday 14 January 2005 12:23 pm, John wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 06:19:20PM +0100, Benjamin Walkenhorst 
> wrote:
> > > > > Hello,
> > > > >
> > > > > Andrew L. Gould wrote:
> > > > > >3. Definitely go with a clean installation of FreeBSD 5.3
> > > > > > rather than 5.2.1.
> > > > >
> > > > > Just a sidenote, I did a source upgrade from 5.2.1 to 5.3,
> > > > > which basically worked okay.
> > > > > Switching from XFree to X.org was really troublesome, on the
> > > > > other hand...
> > > >
> > > > Yes, I would say that the source upgrade from 5.2.1 to 5.3-STABLE
> > > > was fine, it was the xorg/XFree86 and kde issues that made me
> > > > insane. It's possible that I should have just done a pkg_delete
> > > > -a and started over with the packages from that point, but I also
> > > > need to learn to use pkg_upgrade.  I would not hesitate to do the
> > > > source upgrade again for a system which is NOT running X.
> > > >
> > > > I have now reinstalled 5.3, just to get around the Xorg->XFree86
> > > > issue, and I have kde installed, and I have room to spare.  So,
> > > > I'm much farther than I was when I ran out of room, and I still
> > > > have room.  This is a good thing!
> > >
> > > Yes it is!  (...and speaking as someone who is typing with 2
> > > fractured wrists, all good news is welcome!)
> >
> > Oh, no!  I'd ask what happened, but I'll wait until you're healed
> > up...
> 
> Indoor soccer injury -- the floor is concrete.
> 
> >
> > > I hope you have lots of fun and joy with your system before the
> > > next challenge (which we will gladly participate in) !
> >
> > OK, well, it seems I spoke just a little bit too soon.  Or, maybe I'm
> > OK, but just worried.
> >
> > I downloaded and burned an ISO 5.3 CD.  I did a minimal install,
> > NFS mounted all the 5-stable packages I kept from the last time
> > around (I'm not a COMPLETE idiot!) and simply did a "pkg_add
> > kde-lite*".  That got me a long, long ways.  I also needed to do
> > a "pkg_add xorg-server*" but I think nearly everything else got
> > loaded up.  I was in great shape in terms of disk footprint and
> > everything else I can tell from here.
> >
> > Now, at this point, I'm running FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE, but I've
> > installed packages from FreeBSD 5-STABLE, but if my understanding
> > is correct, that should be OK.
> >
> > This is the point at which things got interesting.  I did the
> > pkg_add for OOo - and found that I was missing four dependent
> > packages.  As luck would have it, all four of them have been
> > updated since I started this process, so I downloaded and installed
> > the newer revv'ed ones, but I got an error message that
> > something (I wished I'd trapped the output) wanted libm.so.2.
> > When I look around, I find that I have libm.so.3.  The four
> > packages were atk, pango, shared-mime-info, and gtk-2.  I
> > think one of the post-install scripts complained that it couldn't
> > run something,
> >
> > Am I preparing trouble, or am I OK?  Despite the warning, everything
> > seems to be installing.  Obviously, I wasn't able to install the
> > newer packages as dependencies, but after installing them by hand,
> > the things on which they depended seem to be installing OK, though
> > with warnings.
> >
> > Anyway, I have everything installed, (except maybe a JDK - any
> > suggestions?) and I'm at 80% in my combined root /usr partition,
> > which feels a little tighter than I would like, but I do still have
> > 270Mb free, so that's not too bad - that's larger than my first
> > FreeBSD hard drive! :)
> >
> > OO just finished.  Other than 16 packages that are newer than
> > expected, it seems to have installed.  I'm not actually with the
> > machine, so I can't start X and kde and try it.
> >
> > Am I OK, or should I start over and redo something?
> 
> If the package finished installing, everything may be okay (no 
> guarantees).  Create a list of frequent tasks in OpenOffice; and run 
> OpenOffice through its paces.

YIPPEE!!!  Two more hurdles cleared, and I'm up and running!

I learned two lessons:
1) Don't depend on dependencies
2) startx is still your friend

With the first one, I was having X mess up my screen completely,
and not having it be restored when I tried to return to my virtual
terminal on doing an "X -configure xorg.config.new".  Checking the
log files revealed that the there mkfontdir wasn't loaded.  I
had done a "pkg_add kde-lite*" and expected it to take care of
all the dependencies.  That was not the case.  Parts of x.org
were loaded, but not all of it.  That was quickly corrected by
doing a "pkg_add xord-6.8*" of the meta package to get the rest
of the pieces.

The next one was really strange.  kde would start, but in the
middle of initializing, it would simply go away.  Using startx
to get things rolling, I captured the error message.  Somehow,
/tmp/.ICE was owned by my personal uid rather than root, which
kde found unacceptable.  Not sure how that happened.  I certainly
didn't create it by hand.  I may have installed the package which
created it when "su'ed" from my regular uid - I can't say for sure.
Odd that it would have come into being that way.  Or maybe when
I first ran "startx" as myself.  Dunno.  Changed the ownership,
and off it went.

Now, I just have to figure out this DST thing so I can turn my
power control stuff back on.

Oh, and figure out WHAT is going on with Konqueror.  On some web sites,
it is just fine and dandy, but on other web sites, it just is GLACIAL.
I'm talking about MINUTES to render a page.  The CPU isn't busy, there's
no IO going on - I have NO IDEA what it is waiting for.  It's so bad,
it stretches credibility.  Then, as I said, on other web sites, it's
just fine.  Sometimes is stops with 94% loaded and just waits a
couple minutes - sometimes it pauses with like "12 out of 19 image
loaded," and sometimes it pauses just as soon as it resolves the
new URL and connects to the server. VERY odd.

So - now back to where things were before my fatal load of Win 98.
1) Figure out Sound FreeBSD
2) Figure out browers and Plugins for FreeBSD
3) Try to get some of apm/acpi working
4) Figure out WHY the system won't recognize (not even IDENTIFY)
   a CD in my laptop multi-bay

Those were all issues before my switch to 5.3.

I have a functional laptop again!  YAY!

Thanks to all, especially you, Andrew, typing with your poor
wrists!
-- 

John Lind
john at starfire.MN.ORG