[SOLVED] Slackware 15.0 Alpha 1

cwizardone · 02-16-2021, 09:45 AM

The "alpha" release has made the front page of DistroWatch.

https://distrowatch.com/

bamunds · 02-16-2021, 10:51 AM

So for someone on 14.2 how painful is the upgrade going to be or will it be a wipe and re-install? I ask becuase Pat's note indicates no new HOWTO's and in looking at packages.slackware.com all the README's are still from 2016-1018. If I remember there was a rather painful upgrade in 2018/19 when the .la files were removed, is that right? I'm still on 14.2 stable, since my hardware is an old Pentium D 950 and a 7200 SATA. Does it even make sense to update to 15.0-Alpha? I'd love to add some testing results, but I can't afford downtime right now. Appreciate advice. Cheers, BrianA_MN

hazel · 02-16-2021, 10:55 AM

Given that glibc has changed its name, I suspect a direct update would be very tricky.

bamunds · 02-16-2021, 11:02 AM

I don't read -current's changelog daily. What do you mean glibc changed it's name? I guess, you mean that every program which links to glibc has to be updated/recompiled to the new glibc. But that is exactly what Pat has done with this latest release. In effect the slackpkg update is probably equivalent to a new install, but that is typical whenever glibc is updated. I don't get your suggestion, can you elaborate?

hazel · 02-16-2021, 11:07 AM

Strictly speaking it hasn't changed its name, but Pat has changed the name of the runtime package to aaa_glibc-solibs. See here for instance: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...te-4175690514/. Which puts a wrinkle into updating it.

bamunds · 02-16-2021, 11:20 AM

@hazel, thanks for the clues. It appears that if one follows the update/upgrade process properly and use the standard, ie slackpkg update, slackpkg install-new, slackpkg upgrade-all, slackpkg clean-system, four step approach, then everything will load properly and reboot will be successful. However the link you provided is certainly one to keep in mind, in case a recovery is needed. And yes a full backup of critical files and /home makes sense just in case. Anything I'm missing?

bamunds · 02-16-2021, 11:22 AM

Does anyone know if a unique thread for 15.0-Alpha Testing results and help is going to be started?

LuckyCyborg · 02-16-2021, 12:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bamunds

So for someone on 14.2 how painful is the upgrade going to be or will it be a wipe and re-install? I ask becuase Pat's note indicates no new HOWTO's and in looking at packages.slackware.com all the README's are still from 2016-1018. If I remember there was a rather painful upgrade in 2018/19 when the .la files were removed, is that right? I'm still on 14.2 stable, since my hardware is an old Pentium D 950 and a 7200 SATA. Does it even make sense to update to 15.0-Alpha? I'd love to add some testing results, but I can't afford downtime right now. Appreciate advice. Cheers, BrianA_MN

In my humble opinion, the Slackware -current's packages set differs so much from Slackware 14.2 that there are no advantages on "upgrading" to 15.0 alpha1 from stable 14.2 .

The elogind replaced ConsoleKit2 and pm-utils, Plasma5 replaced KDE4, XFCE upgraded and built against elogind, lots of package removals and additions, and the cherry on top of cake: three freaking mass rebuilds would ensure that anyways you would reinstall everything, then you'll have to deal with the removals and the changes on configs.

I should remember that looks like upgradepkg is painfully slow on those mass rebuilds?

That's WHY I for one I will suggest you to simplify your life and after doing a backup of your configs (for a reference) to do a fresh/clean install.

Anyway, this way would be certainly way faster than upgrading over 1700 packages...

montagdude · 02-16-2021, 01:07 PM

I just upgraded my -current, which was stale by one or two weeks. I followed ponce's instructions here:

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...3/#post6217668

It went pretty smoothly. Be aware that some config files for slackpkg have changed. I use vimdiff to merge changes. slackpkg+ was also updated. After updating its config file, there was a warning that the 1.7 branch would no longer support Slackware 15, so some changes to the slackpkgplus.conf file were also required. It's all spelled out nicely in the warning messages though, so there were no issues. Just pay attention and you should be fine.

enorbet · 02-16-2021, 01:42 PM

Hello bamunds. I can tell you that from testing Current for a little over a year now I was so impressed with it's performance that I wanted to try in on a Core 2 Duo laptop and possibly replace my old 14.2 install. I figured Current had come so far that trying to upgrade would be more work than replacement so I just made a parallel install to compare. Current ran so much better on this ancient laptop that I chose to make a backup of what I needed to keep from "/home" and at first just emptied the 14.2 partition. Later I bought a 250GB Samsung 2.5" SSD (40 bux) and fresh installed and copied what I'd saved. It should be an easy upgrade to 15 now and was way more than worth the effort. The combination breathed new life into my T61P.

Paulo2 · 02-16-2021, 01:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bamunds

Does anyone know if a unique thread for 15.0-Alpha Testing results and help is going to be started?

+1.
Should we post problems here?

'mail' doesn't work, it shows an error message about the lock file.
Affects both root and my regular user.

Code:

$ mail
mailx: Creating file (dot) lock for /var/spool/mail/paulo . failed
mailx:   Fishy!  Is someone trying to "steal" foreign files?
mailx:   Please check the mailbox file etc. manually, then retry
mailx: Unable to (dot) lock mailbox, aborting operation: Resource temporarily unavailable
mailx: Creating file (dot) lock for /var/spool/mail/paulo . failed
mailx:   Fishy!  Is someone trying to "steal" foreign files?
mailx:   Please check the mailbox file etc. manually, then retry
mailx: Unable to (dot) lock mailbox: Resource temporarily unavailable
mailx: There are new messages in the error message ring (denoted by ERROR),
mailx:   which can be managed with the `errors' command
ERROR# Continue, possibly losing changes [yes]/no?

Doesn't matter answer yes or no, mail doesn't start.

'man mail' has this at the FAQ section:

Code:

   Howto handle stale dotlock files
     folder sometimes fails to open MBOX mail databases because creation of
     dotlock files is impossible due to existing but unowned lock files.
     Mailx does not offer an option to deal with those files, because it is
     considered a site policy what counts as unowned, and what not.  The site
     policy is usually defined by administrator(s), and expressed in the con‐
     figuration of a locally installed MTA (for example Postfix
     ‘stale_lock_time=500s’).  Therefore the suggestion:

           $ </dev/null mailx -s 'MTA: be no frog, handle lock' $LOGNAME

     By sending a mail to yourself the local MTA can use its normal queue
     mechanism to try the delivery multiple times, finally decide a lock file
     has become stale, and remove it.

I sent the email and received it, but it didn't work.

Where is the mail lock file created? /var/spool/mail/? I created a file there, there's no permissions problem I think.

Another problem is with SBo(-current) tor-browser, it shows "Gah. Your tab just crashed."

Aeterna · 02-16-2021, 02:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paulo2

+1.
Should we post problems here?
......
Another problem is with SBo(-current) tor-browser, it shows "Gah. Your tab just crashed."

I can't even start tor-browser. When I try to invoke it from the command line nothing happens, no errors just back to prompt.

bathory · 02-16-2021, 02:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paulo2

+1.
Should we post problems here?

'mail' doesn't work, it shows an error message about the lock file.
Affects both root and my regular user.

Code:

$ mail
mailx: Creating file (dot) lock for /var/spool/mail/paulo . failed
mailx:   Fishy!  Is someone trying to "steal" foreign files?
mailx:   Please check the mailbox file etc. manually, then retry
mailx: Unable to (dot) lock mailbox, aborting operation: Resource temporarily unavailable
mailx: Creating file (dot) lock for /var/spool/mail/paulo . failed
mailx:   Fishy!  Is someone trying to "steal" foreign files?
mailx:   Please check the mailbox file etc. manually, then retry
mailx: Unable to (dot) lock mailbox: Resource temporarily unavailable
mailx: There are new messages in the error message ring (denoted by ERROR),
mailx:   which can be managed with the `errors' command
ERROR# Continue, possibly losing changes [yes]/no?

Doesn't matter answer yes or no, mail doesn't start.

'man mail' has this at the FAQ section:

Code:

   Howto handle stale dotlock files
     folder sometimes fails to open MBOX mail databases because creation of
     dotlock files is impossible due to existing but unowned lock files.
     Mailx does not offer an option to deal with those files, because it is
     considered a site policy what counts as unowned, and what not.  The site
     policy is usually defined by administrator(s), and expressed in the con‐
     figuration of a locally installed MTA (for example Postfix
     ‘stale_lock_time=500s’).  Therefore the suggestion:

           $ </dev/null mailx -s 'MTA: be no frog, handle lock' $LOGNAME

     By sending a mail to yourself the local MTA can use its normal queue
     mechanism to try the delivery multiple times, finally decide a lock file
     has become stale, and remove it.

I sent the email and received it, but it didn't work.

Where is the mail lock file created? /var/spool/mail/? I created a file there, there's no permissions problem I think

Same here.

dr.s · 02-16-2021, 03:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LuckyCyborg

In my humble opinion, the Slackware -current's packages set differs so much from Slackware 14.2 that there are no advantages on "upgrading" to 15.0 alpha1 from stable 14.2 .

The elogind replaced ConsoleKit2 and pm-utils, Plasma5 replaced KDE4, XFCE upgraded and built against elogind, lots of package removals and additions, and the cherry on top of cake: three freaking mass rebuilds would ensure that anyways you would reinstall everything, then you'll have to deal with the removals and the changes on configs.

I should remember that looks like upgradepkg is painfully slow on those mass rebuilds?

That's WHY I for one I will suggest you to simplify your life and after doing a backup of your configs (for a reference) to do a fresh/clean install.

Anyway, this way would be certainly way faster than upgrading over 1700 packages...

+1
Simpler and faster to install -current and go from there than to upgrade 14.2 which took a long time when I tried it in a test VM,
and as a bonus you get a clean defragged system.
And if you've been on -current for the past few years, nothing to do except the usual daily/weekly slackpkg updates

bamunds · 02-16-2021, 04:56 PM

Thanks everyone for the feedback on upgrade paths. I think I'll wait until 15 is called beta or maybe even stable, if it comes in the next six months. I need this machine, my daily driver, to continue to function without interruption for the next few "tax season" months.

I have an older HP Z5000 laptop with an AMD64 and NVIDIA card that can test 15-alpha. That will let me test nouveau and LVM How much space is 15-alpha requiring for "/" with a separate /boot, /home, /opt, /swap, /tmp and /var?

FYI, that's drive structure is how I setup all my machines. There is four year old thread on why I use separate volumes and I don't want to re-hash the merits.