Slackpkg killed my new installation.....
 

Hey Guys,

I've just made the jump from Slackware 10 to Slackware 13 x64 with my new PC. Spent an entire day getting it installed via my horribly slow internet connection and all went well. As a regular Gnome user on my other machine (Ubuntu) I ended up dropping on to XFCE for a desktop.

Things have gone real smooth until I used slackpkg to update. First I updated Firefox to 3.6, which unfortunately resulted in not being able to get back into XFCE with some kind of libcairo error. I wondered if there was another update which should have been included so I updated everything else with:

slackpkg upgrade-all

Now nothing works. Slackware boots but I can't even log in as root (hostname shows as none). Anyone got the faintest idea what has happened? I've used Slackware since version 7 and never had anything like this. In fact, never had a problem which is why I've never had to use forums.

Please let me know if anyone else has experienced this because this seems instantly quite unstable.

Thanks all.

Did you run slackpkg update before slackpkg upgrade-all?
Are you sure you've got a Slackware 64 mirror commented out in /etc/slackpkg/mirrors?

Yes, ran the update first. Just checked the mirrors file and yes, I was downloading the updates from virginmedia in the UK. None of the package updates reported any errors.

Can't think of anything else. Have to wait for a real expert to come along. :)

Thanks anyway Brian. Did't want to give up on Slack after so long, and with so many other really bad distros out there at the moment there isn't much choice if I want something stable. But, if this happens again not sure what I will do because I have a couple of apps that need the updated libraries and I don´t want to install many of those from source.

Did you "slackpkg install-new" and then "slackpkg upgrade-all"?

Oh, I've hosed my system with slackpkg. I was running a Slackware 64 system,and I'd uncommented a Slackware-13.0 mirror rather than a Slackware64-13.0 mirror.

Easy mistake to make.

That would only apply if you were upgrading from one release to another, from stable to current. Not for a fresh install.

Uhm, I'm lost, then. When I used slackpkg before syncing with current, upgrade-all did the job.

try rerunning setup from a slackware cd.

This is one of the reasons why I am wary when using programs like slackpkg and slapt-get. They usually work but when they don't they leave your system unusable.

There _was_ a kernel update, but if slackpkg updated your kernel without you running lilo I don't think Slackware would be booting at all.

If possible could you post the exact line from /etc/slackpkg/mirrors and also the arch line from /etc/slackpkg/slackpkg.conf and is the kernel blacklisted in /etc/slackpkg/blacklist ?

I'm not too familiar with slackpkg, but that info should help someone who is.

Dude...please don't compare slackpkg to slapt-get. The utility slackpkg is officially supported; slapt-get is not. I've had zero problems using slackpkg to upgrade my systems. I've found that slackpkg is a very smart utility.

I won't compare them, but slapt-get is pretty handy. I've been playing with SalixOS and while I'm not 100% thrilled with it (it seems to take a lot more post-install config than Slackware proper) Slapt-get is pretty nice. Although the first thing I did with it was to install pkgtools. Go figure.

Most usual mistake would be that slackpkg was pointed to a 32bit mirror when upgrading.

What gfx driver are you using? I did an update to 64-current and the kernel change hosed everything.

going from slackware 10 to slackware64-13 seems like a huge jump in terms of an upgrade. i would think it would have just been more advisable and easier to backup what you need and then do a fresh install. but i guess you want to try to fix your machine. in that case can you provide some more details? like what do you mean you can't even log in as root? what exactly happens? can you login with another account? the fact that there is no hostname is not too concerning. just provide as many details about not being able to login as possible. if you definitely can't login you can use a live cd (the slackware install cd is one) and then mount the file system and see if you can chroot into it.

i also don't think it is fair to say that slackpkg killed your system. slackpkg is not magic and can't do the right thing under every kind of condition.

From CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT

In my own experience, Slackpkg is a great tool if you know how to use it.
Most issues like this are caused by lack of user experience, failing to read the docs and then blaming the tools.

Of course, this happening is a nice opportunity to get more experience with the distro and its tools.
Good luck!

gvernold
Was it an upgrade or a clean install?

'new pc' sounds like 'clean install' (but I've been proven wrong in the past before :) )

Also: for 10 to 13 -> sounds like a 'clean install' to.

Also: the 32bit mirror instead of a 64 one, did make my first slackware64 installation go bork. with the same sympoms: no name.

Yeah, I thought I'd seen something about a mirror mix-up before. And there's the # and a space in front of the mirrors entries, if only the # is removed, that's caused some problems too.

Looking in /etc/slackpkg/mirrors
 

I cant see any reference to a 13 x86_64 mirror ... :D
# In this file you can find mirrors for the following (in this order):
# Slackware 12.2, 12.1, 12.0, and -curren

Can someone tell me how to uncomment the correct mirror for x86_64

Your slackpkg is way too old.

Eric

Sorry to not post back so quickly, I've only got internet at work so had to wait until I was back in today.

I didn't upgrade to Slackware 13, I did a fresh install and just made the jump from Version 10 to 13. I've not used any versions in-between so didn't know how much had really changed and if something had that affected my problem. I've just tried getting into my Slackware partition and all the folders are where they should be in / but some of the child folders are empty..... completely empty including slackpkg. I had a go at booting up again this morning but again, I get to the login prompt without any errors but it won't accept root as a login and the host prompt says my machine is called {none}.

I'm just about to attempt to reinstall but I will make two installations and see if I can repeat the problem again.

Sorry if I offended anyone by saying slackpkg killed my installation but slackpkg was the only thing that had run, I've never had problems with versions from 7 til 10 so it kinda did look like it was down to slackpkg.

Could be a faulty .iso or burn to DVD/CDs?

sorry i thought you were doing an upgrade with slackpkg. did you try using a live cd to access the filesystem? if you do this then you can check to see what is missing in the environment. if you can't login make sure there is a /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow file. also make sure that there is a login binary a shell as well as any libraries that these programs depend on. if these kinds of things are missing then it's probably best to just try a reinstall as who knows what else would be missing. brianL might be correct. if the iso was corrupted or missing files then that could be the reason for your broken system.

Interesting, hopefully you can find out what caused it and post back.

Just for the record, slackpkg could have worked after doing steps 1 and 2 of the UPGRADE.TXT

pkgtool and slackpkg have changed a lot lately and we've gone from .tgz to txz

Well, as Pat say at the end of step 9:
I wish everyone good luck with this! :)

Well I've managed to get reinstalled and tried to repeat the problem but so far it won't repeat. I've selected exactly the same slackpkg mirrors that I had before and this time it's all worked out. I have also done a quick copy of the partition that contained the installation that died on me and surely enough half the folders and files that should be there, aren't. I've checked my hard drive and it seems to be fine though someone on an IRC chat suggested that I could have had a problem with ext4 whilst I was downloading the updates.

Thanks for all the suggestions and if I ever find out what it was I'll repost on here again. Now I've got to start another post about installing Python...... thanks again all.