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For those of you unfortunate enough to have lost your job or bored enough to start looking for one again, here’s a couple of links you may find helpfull: Company Listings in Canada: http://www.branhamgroup.com/branham300/index.php?year=2007 http://listingsca.com/Ontario/Toronto-Region/Computing/Software/index5.asp http://canada.firmlist.com/ontario/toronto.phtml http://www.canadianisp.ca/ Job Boards: http://www.workopolis.com http://monster.ca http://www.jobsetc.ca/ http://www.dice.com http://working.com http://torontoitjobs.com http://jobboom.com http://jobbank.gc.ca

 

Then there are job agencies but likely that will be the buik of listings on the Job Boards. 

Good Luck!
TK@MicroWorkshop.com

P.S.  I would like to thank everyone who has sent me their resume.  I’m not hiring.

[ PROBLEM ] The task bar panel is gone or has been removed/unconfigured part of some upgrade.  This is one issue I had when upgrading from Fedora 8 to Fedora 9.  The taskbar panel disappeared and the UI software provided with KDE 4.0 did not appear to have any option for reenabling it: [ SOLUTION ] The issue was with my settings here in regards to: [Containments][1] formfactor=0 geometry=0,0,205,47 location=0 locked=false plugin= screen=-1

 Part of my issue was that I had ‘location=0‘ above when it should be set to either 1,2,3,4 and ‘plugin=‘ should have been ‘plugin=panel‘.  ‘screen=-1‘ should also be set to something meaning full like 0+ instead of -1.  Once I followed below steps, the config file was regenerated by KDE and contained:

[Containments][2]
formfactor=2
geometry=0,824,1152,40
location=4
locked=false
plugin=panel
screen=0
size=32
transform=1,0,0,0,1,0,0,-1900,1

[Containments][2][Applets][3]
geometry=0,8,36,36
locked=false
plugin=launcher

[Containments][2][Applets][3][Configuration]
Height=499
Width=437

[Containments][2][Applets][4]
geometry=40,8,870,32
locked=false
plugin=tasks

[Containments][2][Applets][5]
geometry=914,8,40,32
locked=false
plugin=pager

[Containments][2][Applets][6]
geometry=958,8,30,32
locked=false
plugin=systemtray

[Containments][2][Applets][7]
geometry=992,8,32,32
locked=false
plugin=notifier

[Containments][2][Applets][8]
geometry=1028,8,120,44
locked=false
plugin=digital-clock

[General]
locked=false

Which resolved the issue.  Here’w how you do it.  I’ve opted to move ‘plasma-appletsrc‘ out of the way to let KDE regenerate one for me thus enabling the taskbar I’ve been missing.  The reason for this is that I noticed in the file that it was very messy and would require alot of editing.  The quicker solution would be to regenerate the file:

$ cd /root/.kde/share/config/
$ mv plasma-appletsrc old.plasma-appletsrc
$ init 3 (Will log you out of KDE)
$ A shell will come up asking for login.  Relogin into the shell.
$ init 5 (To restart the X Server and relogin to KDE to see your changes)

You can also edit the file yourself if you want to tweak the look of your desktop.  That’s certainly possible but is out of scope of this article.

Cheers!
TK@MicroWorkshop.com
 

[ PROBLEM ] How do I change my screen resolution? [ SOLUTION ] In Fedora 9 you can navigate to the Display in this manner: (CAUTION: Clicking ‘Display’ below may reset your video as it automatically runs): 1) Start / KDE Menu 2) Applications 3) Settings 4) System Settings 5) Display

but in testing I found that for KDE 4.0.X I couldn’t apply the settings at all.  Maybe a bug at this time.  However, there is also a command called ‘xrandr‘ that can change the resolution of your desktop on the fly from the command line.  Without parameters, it will print available settings:

$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1152 x 864, maximum 1600 x 1200
VGA-0 connected 1152×864+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 338mm x 270mm
   1152×864       75.0*+   75.0     70.0     60.0
   1280×1024      60.0 +   75.0     60.0     60.0
   1600×1024      60.2
   1400×1050      60.0
   1440×900       59.9
   1280×960       60.0
   1360×768       59.8
   1024×768       75.1     75.0     70.1     60.0
   832×624        74.6
   800×600        72.2     75.0     60.3     56.2
   640×480        75.0     72.8     72.8     75.0     66.7     60.0     59.9
   720×400        70.1
DVI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
S-video disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
$

To make the above permanent use you will need to edit ‘/etc/X11/xorg.conf‘ and something similar to what you see below under the "Screen" section, selecting the appropriate resolution:

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Screen0"
        Device     "Videocard0"
        Monitor    "Monitor0"
        DefaultDepth     16
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     16
                Modes    "1280×1024" "1152×864" "1024×768" "800×600" "640×480"
        EndSubSection
EndSection

To get a list of actions the script would take use:

$ xrandr –dryrun -s 1280×1024

CAUTION: When playing with video resolution, it’s possible you can hit a resolution outside your monitors range.  A message ‘Out of range‘ on the monitor may be printed as it was the case here when using ‘xrandr -s 1280×1024‘.  One possible way to get out of this situation when you are stuck in a mode you can’t get out of is to use this trick. (NOTE: See safer solution further down.)  Run ‘xrandr -s <RESOLUTION>‘ for a resolution you know works.  Next run ‘xrandr -x <UNTESTED RESOLUTION>‘.  If you get stuck, press the up arrow key twice and hit enter (though you will not see anything as your monitor will be blank).  It will bring up the last:

$ xrandr -s 1280×1024
$ xrandr -s 1600×1024
$ xrandr -s 1280×1024 (UP arrow twice + Return/Enter key)
$

This will bring you back to the last known working resolution in this case the second command typed.  Here is a slightly more automated and SAFER way:

$ xrandr -s 1600×1024;sleep 10;xrandr -s 1280×1024

What it will do is change the resolution to 1600×1024, sleep for 10 seconds then change it back to 1280×1024.  This would be equivelent to the Windows resolution test option under ‘Display‘. 

Cheers!
TK@MicroWorkshop.com

[ PROBLEM ] Seamingly never ending list of or non stop continous "expr: syntax error" [ SOLUTION ] $ which acroread /usr/bin/acroread $ vi /usr/bin/acroread +418 [FROM ] echo $mfile| sed ’s/libgtk-x11-\([0-9]*\).0.so.0.\([0-9]\)00.\([0-9]*\)\|\(.*\)/\1\2\3/g’ [ TO ] Add ‘*’ (start) on second ‘[0-9]’ to: echo $mfile| sed ’s/libgtk-x11-\([0-9]*\).0.so.0.\([0-9]*\)00.\([0-9]*\)\|\(.*\)/\1\2\3/g’ Cheers! TK@MicroWorkshop.com

 

What to do with ‘scriptlet failed, exit status 1‘ [ PROBLEM ] $ rpm -e avahi-0.6.17-1.fc7.i386 error: %postun(avahi-0.6.17-1.fc7.i386) scriptlet failed, exit status 1 $ rpm -e openmpi-libs-1.1-8.fc7.i386 error: %preun(openmpi-libs-1.1-8.fc7.i386) scriptlet failed, exit status 2 [ SOLUTION ] $ rpm -e –noscripts avahi-0.6.17-1.fc7 $ $ rpm -e –noscripts openmpi-libs-1.1-8.fc7.i386 $ Cheers! TK@MicroWorkshop.com

Because Fedora 9, like any new software, had a number of issues, logging into it and using it didn’t prove usefull at all.  There is a huge number of changes in KDE 4.X that one needs to contend with and resolve.  One of the issues you may see when using KDE 4.X is that your applications no longer start.  Some other issues you may see with Fedora 9 and KDE 4.X is that all your settings have gone from KDE 3.X.  First however, we will resolve the applications not starting problem:

 [ PROBLEM ]

$ firefox –sync
The program ‘firefox’ received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was ‘BadName (named color or font does not exist)’.
(Details: serial 1347 error_code 15 request_code 45 minor_code 0)
(Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
To debug your program, run it with the –sync command line
option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

$ firefox
The program ‘firefox’ received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was ‘BadName (named color or font does not exist)’.
(Details: serial 712 error_code 15 request_code 45 minor_code 0)
(Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
To debug your program, run it with the –sync command line
option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

However, Konqueror does not crash when the same error is received just prints a bunch of messages but continues to work:

$ konqueror
konqueror(10145) KonqHistoryManager::loadHistory: The history version doesn’t match, aborting loading
X Error: BadName (named color or font does not exist) 15
Major opcode: 45 (X_OpenFont)
Resource id:  0×2400045

X Error of failed request: BadName (named color or font does not exist) Major opcode of failed request: 45 (X_OpenFont)

[ SOLUTION ]

If you see the above, try to use "Add/Remove Programs" on your Fedora 9 lookup x11-fonts and install the missing fonts complained by ‘named color or font does not exist‘.  Another solution is to remove the deprecated package xorg-x11-xfs:

$ rpm -e xorg-x11-xfs-1.0.5-2.fc9.i386
$

And restart your system (CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE).  Alternately, you can disable the service at startup.  To do this run:

$ chkconfig|grep xfs
xfs             0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
$ chkconfig –level 2345 xfs off
$ chkconfig|grep xfs
xfs             0:off   1:off   2:off   3:off   4:off   5:off   6:off
$

In this case, since xorg-x11-xfs is deprecated I removed the package using:

$ rpm -e xorg-x11-xfs-1.0.5-2.fc9.i386 chkfontpath-1.10.1-2.fc8.i386

Cheers!
TK@MicroWorkshop.com

Problems with Fedora 9 and KDE.  When initially logging in to the new Fedora 9 following the upgrade, KDE 4.0 GUI started but all my settings were gone.  Except for my documents that I had in various places, the settings and configuration like KDE themes I had installed earlier, were now gone.  After about two reboots where after I played with KDE settings for display resolution, KDE refused to start and I had to press:

1) CTRL-ALT-F1 (CTRL-ALT<F#> moves you between various running KDE and Command line sessions.  The default session you start with is on CTRL-ALT-F7 in case you need to return)
2) Enter my login.
3) Type ‘startx — :1‘ to get X server (base of KDE) started in a new process.  The new session started on instance accessible through CTRL-ALT-F9.
4) This braught me back to the original KDE GUI.

I wanted a base KDE session while I work on the bugs and problems in Fedora 9.  The above did just that.  In case you have trouble starting up X with KDE, give the above a try.

Cheers!
TK@MicroWorkshop.com
 

The Fedora 8 to Fedora 9 upgrade follows the general procedure outlined on the first Fedora Core upgrade page: RedHat Fedora: Fedora Core 1 to Fedora Core 2 Upgrade .  If you have not already upgraded to F8 please visit  RedHat Fedora: Fedora 7 to Fedora 8 upgrade.  page first before going up to FC9. You will only need to replace step #8 with the below step:

 8 ) Install fedora-relese either using the RPM’s in step 2) below or use another mirror from the fedora.redhat.com site.  You can also use the mirrors from fedoralegacy.org if your distribution is too old.

[ THE UPGRADE PROCESS ]

Because Fedora 9 is a new release, some research needs to be done before upgrading.  One thing to do is check ‘http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/Schedule#Post-release‘ for release notes and dates.  If you are dependent on your Linux distribution for any amount of job/home related work, you might want to wait for the FINAL or official version AND possibly even for a bug fix be rolled out.  One big change to note is that we will move from KDE 3.X to KDE 4.  As with any X.0 versions of software, tendency is that they will be buggy and is a risk you need to weight.  Per the site above, it looks like Fedora 9 is ready for release.  We see the latest Post-release updates are also done on:

 "30 May 2008      fedora-release-notes package update"

It seams we are good to go and there seams to be even a patch release per above.  The procedure is therefore the same. 

1) Ensure your Fedora 8 is up to date by running ‘nice -n 19 yum update‘.

2) Again we start off by making some work folder for all the files and notes we will take on the upgrade process:

$ cd /some/dir
$ mkdir ./F8toF9
$ cd ./F8toF9
$ nice -n 19 yum -y upgrade (Current version - we have not yet installed the release rpm)
.
.
.
No Packages marked for Update
$

Nothing was noted for update.  Then:

$ nice -n 19 yum clean all
.
.
.
.

The above removed a bunch of packages again as it did from Fedora 7 to Fedora 8 upgrade.  Ran it second time to get:

$ nice -n 19 yum clean all
Yum Version: 3.2.8
COMMAND: yum clean all
Installroot: /
Ext Commands:

   all
Cleaning up Everything
$

Meaning my system is now clean.  I followed the above by installing the Fedora 9 releases:

$ wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/9/Fedora/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-notes-9.0.0-1.noarch.rpm
$ wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/9/Fedora/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-9-2.noarch.rpm
$ rpm -Uvh fedora-release*.rpm

$ cat /etc/fedora-release
Fedora release 9 (Sulphur)
$

3) Next we start the actual upgrade process.  As before, this will tell us any missing dependencies we have which we’ll need to resolve prior to completing the upgrade:

$ nice -n 19 yum -y upgrade 2>&1|tee ./Fedora-8-upgrade.June.29.2008.02.00.PM.txt

.
.
.
Error: Missing Dependency: tcl-devel = 1:8.5.1 is needed by package tk-devel
Error: Missing Dependency: libtermcap.so.2 is needed by package nvi-m17n-nocanna
Error: Missing Dependency: libtermcap.so.2 is needed by package ckermit
Error: Missing Dependency: libtermcap.so.2 is needed by package nvi-m17n-canna
Error: Missing Dependency: libssl.so.6 is needed by package ckermit
Error: Missing Dependency: libtermcap is needed by package compat-slang
Error: Missing Dependency: libkdecorations.so.1 is needed by package deKorator
Error: Missing Dependency: libtermcap.so.2 is needed by package cdecl
Error: Missing Dependency: perl(:MODULE_COMPAT_5.8.6) is needed by package perl-XML-Encoding
Error: Missing Dependency: libcrypto.so.6 is needed by package ckermit
Error: Missing Dependency: tcl = 1:8.5.1 is needed by package tk
$

I then decided to download the missing packages.  For a hint of what to get, check  ‘./Fedora-8-upgrade.June.29.2008.02.00.PM.txt‘ above that you generated part from the update step:

As I checked ./Fedora-8-upgrade.June.29.2008.02.00.PM.txt, I noticed that there are two versions of tcl-devel but only one of tk-devel

.
.
tk-devel requires: tcl-devel = 1:8.5.1
–> Processing Dependency: tcl-devel = 1:8.5.1 for package: tk-devel
Searching pkgSack for dep: tcl-devel
skipping reposetup, pkgsack exists
.
.
Potential match for tcl-devel from tcl-devel - 1:8.5.1-4.fc9.i386
Matched tcl-devel - 1:8.5.1-4.fc9.i386 to require for tcl-devel
Potential match for tcl-devel from tcl-devel - 1:8.5.2-2.fc9.i386
Potential resolving package tcl-devel - 1:8.5.1-4.fc9.i386 has newer instance in ts.
.
.

yum found 8.5.2-2.fc9.i386 but only choose the 8.5.1-4 version suitable for the upgrade.  As I checked the various repos online, I notice that:

tcl-devel-8.5.2-2.fc9.i386.rpm
tcl-devel-8.5.1-4.fc9.i386.rpm

but only one for tk-devel:

tk-devel-8.5.1-4.fc9.i386.rpm

I checked ‘http://rpmfind.net‘ online to see what are the current versions available.  The same case was true when I checked: many of the packages did not have the same versions.  I decided being late I’ll check agani later what’s going on here.

The next day, I checked ‘cat /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo‘:

.
.
mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=updates-released-f$releasever&arch=$basearch
.
.

I replaced the above with:

http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=updates-released-f9&arch=i386

to check which repositories it is accessing.  I checked some of them and now ‘tk-devel‘ also came in 8.5.2-2‘ version as well!  On one of the sites listed by above command (http://gulus.usherbrooke.ca/pub/distro/fedora/linux/updates/9/i386) I see:

tcl-8.5.2-2.fc9.i386.rpm    2008-Jun-27 23:06:53    2.1M    application/octet-stream
tcl-devel-8.5.2-2.fc9.i386.rpm    2008-Jun-27 23:06:57    171.2K    application/octet-stream

telling me that that package was actively being updated at the time when I was having these issues above.  I rerun the upgrade with

$ nice -n 19 yum -y upgrade 2>&1|tee ./Fedora-9-upgrade.June.30.2008.02.00.PM.txt

This time no issues from tk-devel or tcl-devel.

Error: Missing Dependency: libtermcap.so.2 is needed by package nvi-m17n-nocanna
Error: Missing Dependency: libtermcap.so.2 is needed by package ckermit
Error: Missing Dependency: libtermcap.so.2 is needed by package nvi-m17n-canna
Error: Missing Dependency: libssl.so.6 is needed by package ckermit
Error: Missing Dependency: libtermcap is needed by package compat-slang
Error: Missing Dependency: libkdecorations.so.1 is needed by package deKorator
Error: Missing Dependency: libtermcap.so.2 is needed by package cdecl
Error: Missing Dependency: perl(:MODULE_COMPAT_5.8.6) is needed by package perl-XML-Encoding
Error: Missing Dependency: libcrypto.so.6 is needed by package ckermit

Now I only have 9 dependencies left

$ rpm -q –whatprovides libtermcap.so.2
$ rpm -aq|grep nvi-m17n-nocanna

I see that both are installed on my system.  nvi-m17n-nocanna sounds vaguely familiar which probably means I installed it in the past at some point.  I check one of the mirrors: http://fedora.mirror.umoss.org/fedora/linux/updates/9/i386/.  The package nvi-m17n-nocanna doesn’t exist as a package in the repo list.  In this case, I have little choice but to remove nvi-m17n-nocanna.

$ rpm -e nvi-m17n-nocanna-1.79-20040401.23

I will reinstall it later if needed and available.  The same situation applies to ckermit.  It also turns out that ckermit was an older FC5 package that didn’t get removed.  The same situation applies to the following packages as well:

ckermit-8.0.211-5.fc5
compat-slang-1.4.9-27.2.2
deKorator-0.1-1fb
cdecl-2.5-30
perl-XML-Encoding-1.01-27

The next attempt gave me another missing dependency:

$ nice -n 19 yum -y upgrade 2>&1|tee ./Fedora-9-upgrade.July.4.2008.00.13.AM.txt
Error: Missing Dependency: libtermcap.so.2 is needed by package nvi-m17n-canna

I reran above upgrade after removing ‘nvi-m17n-canna‘.  This time no dependencies were listed:

$ nice -n 19 yum -y upgrade 2>&1|tee ./Fedora-9-upgrade.July.4.2008.01.23.AM.txt
.
.
 Transaction Summary
=============================================================================
Install    199 Package(s)
Update    1859 Package(s)
Remove       1 Package(s)

Total download size: 2.9 G
Downloading Packages:
.
.
http://less.cogeco.net/ftp/fedora/linux/updates/9/i386/kdeedu-4.0.5-1.fc9.i386.rpm: [Errno 4] Socket Error: timed out
Trying other mirror.
.
.

timeout and a whopping 2.9 GB needs to be downloaded.  the timeout was due to my Cable Modem loosing it’s connection to my unnamed ISP.  I power cycled the Cable Modem and the installation continued after a few dozen of the above messages but failed anyway eventually.  Rerunning the upgrade produced a few of:

file /usr/share/man/man8/ftpd_selinux.8.gz from install of selinux-policy-3.3.1-74.fc9.noarch conflicts with file from package selinux-policy-strict-1.27.1-2.27.noarch

One possible solution to removing the selinux problem above is to remove some of the modules or all if you do not wish to use selinux

$ rpm -e –notriggers selinux-policy-strict-1.27.1-2.27

or for a more complete removal use:

$ rpm -e –notriggers –allmatches selinux-policy-strict

To remove I ran:

$ rpm -aq|grep selinux-policy-strict
selinux-policy-strict-1.27.1-2.27
$ rpm -e selinux-policy-strict-1.27.1-2.27

I then reran

$ nice -n 19 yum -y upgrade 2>&1|tee ./Fedora-9-upgrade.July.4.2008.10.32.PM.txt

This time the installation completed and I rebooted to Fedora 9.  However, there were problems, particularly with KDE 4.  As of the writing of this post, I reran ‘nice -n 19 yum -y upgrade‘ which listed some 240 packages to be updated since I upgraded to Fedora 9 two weeks ago.  This gives some clue as to the active community behind Fedora 9.  For the list of issues, use the top right search box for the issue you have.

[ CLEANING UP OLD PACKAGES ]

After doing this many upgrades (In this case From Fedore Core 1 to Fedora 9), you may want to remove some of the old packages you have had.

 

$ rpm -aq|grep fc4
skype-1.3.0.53-fc4
umb-scheme-3.2-39.fc4.1
cdicconf-0.2-11.1.fc4
iiimf-server-12.2-4.fc4.2
libfame-0.9.1-7.2.fc4
$ rpm -e skype-1.3.0.53-fc4
$ rpm -e umb-scheme-3.2-39.fc4.1
$ rpm -e cdicconf-0.2-11.1.fc4
$ rpm -e iiimf-server-12.2-4.fc4.2
userdel: user iiimd does not exist
error: %preun(iiimf-server-12.2-4.fc4.2.i386) scriptlet failed, exit status 6
$ rpm -e libfame-0.9.1-7.2.fc4
$

Repeat the above for FC1 through FC9 (Yes including the ‘C‘ in F7 to F9)

Good Luck,
TK@MicroWorkshop.com

The Fedora 7 to Fedora 8 upgrade follows the general procedure outlined on the first Fedora Core upgrade page: RedHat Fedora: Fedora Core 1 to Fedora Core 2 Upgrade .  If you have not already upgraded to F7 please visit  RedHat Fedora: Fedora Core 6 to Fedora 7 upgrade.  page first before going up to FC8. You will only need to replace step #8 with the below step:

 8 ) Install fedora-relese either using the RPM’s in step 2) below or use another mirror from the fedora.redhat.com site.  You can also use the mirrors from fedoralegacy.org if your distribution is too old.

 
[ THE UPGRADE PROCESS ]

1) Firstly made an empty folder somewhere on my system to contain any files during the process.  Before trying the update to Fedora 8 I ran below to ensure my system is up to date:

$ nice -n 19 yum -y upgrade
.
.
.
.
No Packages marked for Update
$

2) So I was good to update further.  I followed the above by running:

$ nice -n 19 yum clean all

which removed a number of packages.  I ran the command again and got:

$ nice -n 19 yum clean al
Yum Version: 3.2.8
COMMAND: yum clean all
Installroot: /
Ext Commands:

   all
Cleaning up Everything
$

Next I got the release rpm’s downloaded into my temp folder:

$ wget http://gulus.usherbrooke.ca/pub/distro/fedora/linux/releases/8/Fedora/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-8-3.noarch.rpm
$ wget http://gulus.usherbrooke.ca/pub/distro/fedora/linux/releases/8/Fedora/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-notes-8.0.0-3.noarch.rpm
$ rpm -Uvh fedora-release-8-3.noarch.rpm fedora-release-notes-8.0.0-3.noarch.rpm
Preparing…                ########################################### [100%]
   1:fedora-release-notes   ########################################### [ 50%]
   2:fedora-release         ########################################### [100%]
$

3) Next I run:

$ nice -n 19 yum -y upgrade 2>&1|tee ./Fedora-8-upgrade.June.28.2008.2.00.PM.txt

and wait for the fireworks.  The ‘tee‘ command above logs the output of ‘yum -y upgrade‘ and also splits the output to STDOUT so in case my screen get’s filled up, I can do a post mortem on the update by checking the generated ./Fedora-8-upgrade.June.28.2008.2.00.PM.txt.  It is noteworthy to also mentioned that my /etc/yum.conf also had extended logging enabled (done earlier per previous upgrade) in case of problems:

$ cat /etc/yum.conf
.
.
debuglevel=10
errorlevel=10
.
.
$

This resulted in the following in file ‘Fedora-8-upgrade.June.28.2008.2.00.PM.txt‘.

Dependency Process ending
Error: Missing Dependency: libxcb = 1.0-4.fc8 is needed by package libxcb-devel

Next I run ‘ldt’ which on my system is only an alias equivalent to: alias ldt=’ls -alitrF –color=tty’

$ ldt|grep libxcb
$ pwd
/var/cache/yum/updates/packages
$

The I got the missing RPM from the following site.

$ wget ftp://fr.rpmfind.net/linux/fedora/updates/8/i386/libxcb-1.0-4.fc8.i386.rpm

But this gave me:

$ rpm -Uvh libxcb-1.0-4.fc8.i386.rpm
Preparing…                ########################################### [100%]
        package libxcb-1.1-1.fc7 (which is newer than libxcb-1.0-4.fc8) is already installed
$

So again (as in the previous upgrade with kernels) F7 package is newer then F8 package.  Here are the steps to resolve this.

$ rpm -e libxcb-1.1-1.fc7
error: Failed dependencies:
        libxcb-shape.so.0 is needed by (installed) xine-lib-1.1.11.1-1.fc7.2.i386
        libxcb-shm.so.0 is needed by (installed) xine-lib-1.1.11.1-1.fc7.2.i386
        libxcb-xv.so.0 is needed by (installed) xine-lib-1.1.11.1-1.fc7.2.i386
        libxcb.so.1 is needed by (installed) xine-lib-1.1.11.1-1.fc7.2.i386
        libxcb.so.1 is needed by (installed) kaffeine-0.8.6-3.fc7.i386
$

$ yum install yum-utils
$ rpm -aq|grep yum-utils
yum-utils-1.1.14-4.fc8
$
$ yumdownloader libxcb
Setting up Package Sacks
skipping reposetup, pkgsack exists
skipping reposetup, pkgsack exists
./libxcb-1.0-4.fc8.i386.rpm already exists and appears to be complete
$

Because I already had it downloaded per the ‘wget’ earlier and yumdownload instead of downloading just verified that it’s correct.  :)  This got me along further then after rerunning the above yum update command I got:

.
.
ERROR with rpm_check_debug vs depsolve:
Package cdrecord-devel needs cdrecord = 9:2.01-10, this is not available.
Complete!
$ rpm -aq|grep cdrecord
cdrecord-devel-2.01-10
$

Checking further, nothing else installed.

$ rpm -aq|grep fc8
libxcb-1.0-4.fc8
yum-utils-1.1.14-4.fc8
$

Removed the ‘cdrecord-devel‘ package since no corresponding ‘cdrecord‘ package could be found by Yum for Fedora 8:

$ rpm -e cdrecord-devel-2.01-10
$ rpm -aq|grep cdrecord
$

And reran the upgrade:

$ nice -n 19 yum -Cy upgrade 2>&1|tee ./Fedora-8-upgrade.June.28.2008.11.45.PM.txt
.
.
Error: Caching enabled but no local cache of //var/cache/yum/updates/filelists.sqlite.bz2 from updates
$

Catching option did not work so I had to run ‘-y’ only:

$ nice -n 19 yum -y upgrade 2>&1|tee ./Fedora-8-upgrade.June.28.2008.11.50.PM.txt

This time the upgrade completed successfully without much issues:

$ rpm -aq|grep kernel
kernel-headers-2.6.25.6-27.fc8
kernel-2.6.25.6-27.fc8
kernel-2.6.23.17-88.fc7

________________________________________________________________________________________________
After installing, I checked the root email messages from the system:

—–
/etc/cron.daily/0anacron:

error: libhal_ctx_set_dbus_connection: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoServer: Failed to connect to socket /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket: Connection refused
—–

Checking with below for further errors

$ hald –daemon=no –verbose=yes
06:40:16.074 [I] hald.c:634: hal 0.5.10
06:40:16.074 [I] hald.c:699: Will not daemonize
06:40:16.074 [I] hald_dbus.c:5284: local server is listening at unix:abstract=/var/run/hald/dbus-9lAArDVPR6,guid=0c4e4bd966c85372d65c280048676690
06:40:16.078 [I] ck-tracker.c:387: got seat ‘/org/freedesktop/ConsoleKit/Seat1′
06:40:16.079 [I] ck-tracker.c:317: got session ‘/org/freedesktop/ConsoleKit/Session1′ for seat ‘/org/freedesktop/ConsoleKit/Seat1′
06:40:16.081 [I] ck-tracker.c:270: Got active state (ACTIVE) and uid 0 on session ‘/org/freedesktop/ConsoleKit/Session1′
06:40:16.081 [I] ck-tracker.c:338: Got all sessions on seat ‘/org/freedesktop/ConsoleKit/Seat1′
06:40:16.081 [I] ck-tracker.c:414: Got seats
06:40:16.081 [I] ck-tracker.c:796: Got seats and sessions
Runner started - allowed paths are ‘/usr/libexec:/usr/lib/hal/scripts:/usr/bin’
06:40:16.084 [I] hald_runner.c:301: Runner has pid 7526
06:40:16.085 [W] ci-tracker.c:299: Could not get uid for connection: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner Could not get UID of name ‘org.freedesktop.DBus’: no such name
06:40:16.085 [E] hald_dbus.c:4944: Cannot get caller info for org.freedesktop.DBus
06:40:16.085 [I] hald_runner.c:182: runner connection is 0×824f5a0
06:40:16.158 [I] mmap_cache.c:282: cache mtime is 1214709912
Error binding udev_event socket: Address already in use

________________________

Most likely this issue is the result of the upgrade between Fedora 8 and Fedora 7.  Once the upgrade started, I left the PC to do it’s work.  Once the upgrade finished early morning, the system was still in Fedora 7 and likely caused this issue.  A reboot resolved the issue in this case.

Regards,
TK@MicroWorkshop.com

The Fedora Core 6 to Fedora 7 upgrade follows the general procedure outlined on the first Fedora Core upgrade page: RedHat Fedora: Fedora Core 1 to Fedora Core 2 Upgrade .  If you have not already upgraded to FC6 please visit  RedHat Fedora: Fedora Core 5 to Fedora Core 6 upgrade.  page first before going up to FC7. You will only need to replace step #8 with the below step:

 

8 ) Install fedora-relese either using http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/7/Fedora/i386/os/Fedora/fedora-release-7-3.noarch.rpm or use another mirror from the fedora.redhat.com site.  You can also use the mirrors from fedoralegacy.org if your distribution is too old.

 

[ THE UPGRADE PROCESS ]

There are fundamental changes between FC6 and F7 (Fedora 7). First is the ‘Core‘ name was dropped.  Second partitions and drives no longer have names similar to hda1 but now are called sda1, a change that will need to be done prior to rebooting the system following the upgrade.  (Yet all the packages, after the upgrade are still called *.fc7 instead of *.f7, probably for compatability reasons).
 

1) Check your ‘/etc/fstab‘ configurations:

LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
LABEL=/home             /home                   ext3    defaults        1 2
none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
none                    /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
LABEL=/usr              /usr                    ext3    defaults        1 2
LABEL=/var              /var                    ext3    defaults        1 2
/dev/hdb7               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/cdrom              /mnt/cdrom              auto    noauto,unhide   0 0
/dev/fd0                /mnt/floppy             auto    noauto          0 0
/dev/hda1               /mnt/c                  vfat    defaults        0 0
/dev/hda5               /mnt/d                  vfat    defaults        0 0
/dev/hda6               /mnt/e                  vfat    defaults        0 0

In my case I would have to change all in red.  So where I have ‘hd‘ I need to change it to ‘sd‘.  For example: /dev/sda1.  I will do this before rebooting to Fedora 7  The reason why I don’t have to change ‘/‘ nor ‘/boot‘ etc is because for those I’m using LVM (LABEL=….).  LVM will take care of the mappings for me and therefore I don’t need to change them.

2) Run ‘nice -n 19 yum update‘ to update the FC6 distribution with the latest packages.

3) Create a temporary folder for the upgrade and where to store your files.  Move into the folder.

4) Run ‘wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/7/Fedora/i386/os/Fedora/fedora-release-7-3.noarch.rpm‘ Follow this by running:

$ ll
total 32
1651554 drwxr-xr-x 57 root root  4096 Jun 25 22:13 ../
1831432 drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 Jun 25 22:14 ./
1831433 -rw-r–r–  1 root root 20294 May 24  2007 fedora-release-7-3.noarch.rpm

$ rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/7/Fedora/i386/os/Fedora/fedora-release-7-3.noarch.rpm
Retrieving http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/7/Fedora/i386/os/Fedora/fedora-release-7-3.noarch.rpm
error: Failed dependencies:
        fedora-release-notes >= 7 is needed by fedora-release-7-3.noarch
$

Use wget to get the missing dependencies:

$ ll
total 1412
1651554 drwxr-xr-x 57 root root    4096 Jun 25 22:13 ../
1831432 drwxr-xr-x  2 root root    4096 Jun 25 22:17 ./
1831433 -rw-r–r–  1 root root   20294 May 24  2007 fedora-release-7-3.noarch.rpm
1831434 -rw-r–r–  1 root root 1406757 May 23  2007 fedora-release-notes-7.0.0-1.noarch.rpm
$ rpm -Uvh *.rpm
Preparing…                ########################################### [100%]
   1:fedora-release-notes   ########################################### [ 50%]
   2:fedora-release         ########################################### [100%]
$

5) Run the following.  You may receive some Missing Dependencies you’ll need to satisfy:

$ nice -n 19 yum update rpm* yum*
.
.
.
–> Finished Dependency Resolution
Error: Missing Dependency: python(abi) = 2.4 is needed by package rhnlib
Error: Missing Dependency: python(abi) = 2.4 is needed by package authconfig
Error: Missing Dependency: python(abi) = 2.4 is needed by package up2date
Error: Missing Dependency: python-optik is needed by package up2date
Error: Missing Dependency: python(abi) = 2.4 is needed by package 4Suite
Error: Missing Dependency: python-abi = 2.4 is needed by package 4Suite
Error: Missing Dependency: db4 = 4.3.29-9.fc6 is needed by package db4-utils
$

Starting from ‘authconfig’ I needed to remove a number of packages and dependencies:

$ rpm -e authconfig firstboot-tui authconfig-gtk firstboot system-config-boot

Running

$ yum update rpm* yum*

again it yielded (not surprisingly)

Error: Missing Dependency: python(abi) = 2.4 is needed by package rhnlib
Error: Missing Dependency: python(abi) = 2.4 is needed by package up2date
Error: Missing Dependency: python-optik is needed by package up2date
Error: Missing Dependency: python(abi) = 2.4 is needed by package 4Suite
Error: Missing Dependency: python-abi = 2.4 is needed by package 4Suite
Error: Missing Dependency: db4 = 4.3.29-9.fc6 is needed by package db4-utils

To remove two of the above I ran:

$ rpm -e rhnlib up2date
warning: /etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date-uuid saved as /etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date-uuid.rpmsave

Followed by:

$ rpm -e 4Suite db4-utils
error: Failed dependencies:
        db4-utils is needed by (installed) cyrus-imapd-2.3.9-7.fc6.i386
$ rpm -e 4Suite db4-utils cyrus-imapd

then:

$ rpm -e 4Suite db4-utils cyrus-imapd

to remove the packages.  If you need to these can be reinstalled after your upgrade is complete:

$ yum update rpm* yum*

to make sure you are using the latest yum before you start the update of your system.  Following above, run:

$ nice -n 19 yum -y update 2>&1|tee ./FC6toFedora7-upgrade.txt

In my case I got:

Error: Missing Dependency: perl(Automake::XFile) is needed by package ac-archive
Error: Missing Dependency: perl(Automake::General) is needed by package ac-archive

In this case I will remove the archive and (possibly) get the updated version, if I need it.  I’ve reran ‘nice -n 19 yum -y update 2>&1|tee ./FC6toFedora7-upgrade.txt‘ again.  The final run of above resulted in at least around three dozen "Transaction Check Error:".  Looking over the packages that were conflicting:

"file /usr/share/doc/HTML/pt_BR/common/shadow.png conflicts between attempted installs of kde-i18n-Brazil-3.5.9-4.fc7 and kdelibs-3.5.9-5.fc7"

So this ‘appears’ to be fine if multiple KDE packages share the same files (ie it’s a single app).  However on second check using:

$ rpm -aq|grep kde-i18n-Brazil

I probably won’t satisfy the ” errors I’m seeing.  So I opt to remove the Brazil KDE package and install it later, if I need it:

1] I removed the package from ‘/var/cache/yum/updates/packages/‘ folder.  This is where yum places packages it downloads and to ensure it doesn’t try to install again, I remove it.
2] Remove the old FC6 package I had with ‘rpm -e kde-i18n-Brazil‘

In addition to that, I set some yum configuration parameters to get some more errors/warning that could be breaking my installation:

debuglevel=10
errorlevel=10

(If you don’t have this already set from previous upgrades) in /etc/yum.conf before running ‘nice -n 19 yum -y -C update 2>&1|tee ./FC6toFedora7-upgrade.txt‘ so I can analyze the data after.  The debug level started producing much more output.  This was good.  All of the above yielded in two messages showing up:

1) "between attempted installs of "
2) "conflicts with file from package "

Both of these conflicts I needed to remove since they were between existing packages and what was being installed.  To resolve these, I remove the old existing packages:

$ rpm -e kon2-0.3.9b-26.2 pccts-1.33mr33-11 libXvMCW-0.9.3-1.2.fc4
$ rpm -e kde-i18n-Brazil

[ ERROR YOU MAY RECEIVE ]

Updating  : system-config-bind           ################### [1672/3213]I/O warning : failed to load external entity "glchess.schemas"
Failed to open `glchess.schemas’: No such file or directory

  Updating  : gnome-games                  ################### [1673/3213]
  Updating  : xorg-x11-drivers             ################### [1674/3213]warning: /etc/xinetd.d/ktalk saved as /etc/xinetd.d/ktalk.rpmsave
userdel: user iiimd does not exist
error: %preun(iiimf-server-12.2-4.fc4.2.i386) scriptlet failed, exit status 6
libsemanage.semanage_direct_remove: Module bootloader was not found.
semodule:  Failed on bootloader!
error: %trigger(selinux-policy-strict-2.4.6-108.fc6.noarch) scriptlet failed, exit status 1
libsemanage.semanage_direct_remove: Module bootloader was not found.
semodule:  Failed on bootloader!
error: %trigger(selinux-policy-strict-2.6.4-70.fc7.noarch) scriptlet failed, exit status 1
warning: /usr/share/config/profilerc saved as /usr/share/config/profilerc.rpmsave
 

In the above case, you may need to remove ‘selinux-policy-strict*‘.  Once you are done with the upgrade, you can reinstall it on your system with ‘yum install selinux-policy-strict‘.  You can resolve the second error by doing something like this:

$ rpm -e iiimf-server-12.2-4.fc4.2.i386
userdel: user iiimd does not exist
error: %preun(iiimf-server-12.2-4.fc4.2.i386) scriptlet failed, exit status 6
$ useradd iiimd
$ rpm -e iiimf-server-12.2-4.fc4.2.i386
$ userdel iiimd
userdel: user iiimd does not exist
$ rpm -aq|grep iiimf-server-12.2-4.fc4.2.i386
$

Verify the kernel is installed with

$ rpm -aq|grep kernel

and reboot if Fedora 7 kernel is installed and that you have followed 1) above.  If it is not, you will need to check above steps and your system that, in fact, it did upgrade to Fedora 7 and did not stay in FC6.

Once rebooted and selected the Fedora 7 kernel which booted with a couple of errors since I had a couple of my mounts set without a label instead of changing them as mentioned above in my ‘/etc/fstab‘ file:

/dev/hdb7               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/cdrom              /mnt/cdrom              auto    noauto,unhide   0 0
/dev/fd0                /mnt/floppy             auto    noauto          0 0
/dev/hda1               /mnt/c                  vfat    defaults        0 0
/dev/hda5               /mnt/d                  vfat    defaults        0 0
/dev/hda6               /mnt/e                  vfat    defaults        0 0

My main partitions had labels however and is why I was able to mount the OS but not the swap nor the Windows partitions I had earlier.  I fixed this by editing above ‘/etc/fstab’ file and reenabling my swap with ‘swapon /dev/sdb7‘ once booted to Fedora 7.

 Cheers!
TK@MicroWorkshop.com