Some Issues and Challenges

The excessive amount of work has kept me away from my blog, that's true.  However, the fact that my Linux distros have been performing beyond my expectations has also, in a way, stopped me from writing here.  

I mean... There's very little to write about when nothing breaks.

But then I noticed several problems:

1.  Insync and OpenMandriva Lx:

The upgrade to OpenMandriva Lx 4.2 removed my Insync client on my laptop.  I do not know what the problem was (a Python issue, maybe?).  I have not been able to make it come back.

2.  Insync and PCLinuxOS:

The update I applied yesterday produced the same problem with Insync that I had in OpenMandriva.  So, my laptop cannot sync files with Insync in PCLinuxOS, either. 

3.  Mesa updates and sound problems in Mageia 8:

This is something I have seen before in my desktops.  Four Mesa-related packages ask me to uninstall Steam, which I do not want to do, so I've been postponing such updates for a long time.

Then I noticed that VLC stopped working and that my repo database in MCC was acting weird, refusing to install certain tainted packages.  This led to mute audio in videos played with SMplayer, Mplayer, and Kplayer.

I decided to experiment with these because I need the audio in the desktop to work, so I installed the four Mesa-related files and, sure enough, Mageia got rid of Steam.

My year with Fedora helped me there.  Instead of using MCC, I opened Konsole and used DNF following these instructions from the Mageia Wiki:

 

• If nonfree or tainted repositories are desired, they can be activated using dnf config-manager as shown with this example for 64 bit system (replace x86_64 with i586 for 32 bit):
  

dnf config-manager --set-enabled mageia-x86_64-nonfree updates-x86_64-nonfree
dnf config-manager --set-enabled mageia-x86_64-tainted updates-x86_64-tainted

• 32-bit repositories are turned off by default on 64-bit x86. If you need them:
  

dnf config-manager --set-enabled mageia-i586 updates-i586

With that, after running dnf-update, I could get steam, vlc, ffmpeg, and other packages back.  This repaired the problem with video sound, but VLC is still not operational.

I'll try to fix this.  When I get some time.

 

 

An Easy Fix for a Stupid Mistake

I waited a long time for Mageia 7 and for OpenMandriva Lx 4.  When both distros arrived, I was very happy.

But new distros bring changes, and sometimes it is not easy to adapt.  Mageia 7 has been rock-solid: it is doing a great job in my laptop and both in my daughter's desktop and in mine.  There is one thing, though.  I have been avoiding a strange mesa update that wants to remove Steam.

OpenMandriva is also fantastic, but this new release provided options like rock, release, and rolling.   When I first installed the distro,  I chose rock because I was shying away from the rolling flavor.  Eventually, I had to move to rolling because that was the only way in which I could manage to install Steam in both my laptop and desktop machines.

And then, disaster came to the desktop.  I forgot to update packages in over a month.  Logically, when I attempted the update, kwin was not operational.  I reinstalled as rock and, curiously, this time installing Steam was possible.  So, that took care of the problem.

I then started the update in the laptop.  Since I had been installing upgrades more frequently, I assumed that the process was going to be painless.

I stumbled upon a large update and, just like with the desktop, I had problems.  The screen lock was broken and, even though I tried the recommended method (Ctrl+Alt+F2 to switch to a virtual terminal, then running loginctl unlock-session c2 and then switching back to the running session with Ctrl+Alt+F1), I got an error message.

So, the installation was not completed and the desktop had several issues, like kwin crashing, dragora failing to retrieve the database, and losing widgets and icons.

I was prepared to reinstall as rock, but I thought that maybe I could use dnf to complete the installation.  Dnf showed me that the database was corrupted.

I decided to try rpm --rebuilddb  and then dnf upgrade

That did the trick.  Now OpenMandriva is fully operational on my laptop!