Posts by alexkemp

alexkemp · Off-topic

MiyoLinux wrote:

alexkemp wrote:
My wife and son had Corona, were at home for 10 days, and I never caught it.
Yup. That's what Typhoid Mary said.
Dude...I was just giving my story

Typhoid Mary also refused to accept what the doctors said (with hindsight, that she was an asymptomatic carrier of Typhoid) and thus killed most of her employers (she was employed as a cook, and Typhoid is water-borne).

I simply wanted to point out that you could also be an asymptomatic carrier, this time of Covid-19, so that you could quietly do the decent thing & go get yourself tested so that (if true) you do not infect & kill hundreds of other innocent parties. Or, deploy your raging ego as a scimitar to destroy those unvaccinated around you. Such a difficult choice.

alexkemp · Off-topic

My wife and son had Corona, were at home for 10 days, and I never caught it.

Yup. That's what Typhoid Mary said. But of course you are special, are you not?

alexkemp · Devuan

walterbyrd wrote:

I used RHEL and CentOS at home, and professionally, before the dark days of gnome3/systemd. …
After "upgrading" from CentOS 6.5, I tried hard to like the new CentOS, but failed. I absolutely hated gnome3/systemd, which is why I went with Devuan and MATE.

Ditto. I began administering my own server shortly into the new millennium, just before the first version of CentOS was released (I think it was also shortly before RHEL was a thing, but it *was* RedHat). Then I got a dedicated server, built by the guys that later started CentOS. They were corrupt (I'll try to avoid the whole story, but they have worked extremely hard to make sure that Google does not retain any mention of either of them). I went with RedHat & later moved to CentOS after shifting Host when the two CentOS guys screwed me over (I was used to RH by then, and only afterwards discovered that they were leading agents in establishing CentOS).

I was also disillusioned by CentOS (or, more accurately, RH & their practices with Enterprise Linux). Specifically, it was the way that they deliberately made it impossible to do an in-place upgrade from one major version to another. IIRC they first tried to stop the in-place upgrade of RHEL/CentOS-4 to -5 but, although it was difficult, effective steps to achieve it were published (I may have the versions wrong). They then made sure that RHEL/CentOS-5 to -6 actually *was* impossible; you had to utterly wipe the server before installation. I was done with RedHat after that.

Contrast Devuan:– I started with Debian-Jessie & did an in-place upgrade to Devuan. Not easy, but it worked without too much fuss. Then in-place upgrades through 3 more versions (ASCII, Beowulf & now Chimaera). Yet another impressive difference between RH & Devuan.

alexkemp · Installation

(apt-add-repository): Ah yes, so I see, cannot even find it in a devuan repo. What a shame, looks like a useful utility, even if only used once.

I cannot recall having seen a debian url during my daily updates from command-line. Perhaps need to look more closely next time.

alexkemp · Installation

Yes. Your sources are wrong, somewhere (should be deb.devuan.org, not debian) (look at the error msg, not your sources.list).

Try $ apt-cache policy to get the full list, or (to summarise) apt-cache policy | awk '/http.*amd64/{print$2}' | sort -u. FWIW, here is my current repository list:

$ grep -h ^deb /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera main non-free contrib
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera-security main non-free contrib
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera-updates main non-free contrib
deb http://deb.devuan.org/devuan chimaera-proposed-updates main non-free contrib
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera-backports main non-free contrib

Once you are sure of your repository list, and place it into a suitable file (eg 'current.repos.list'), the following will setup your repository for you (see stackoverflow):

apt-add-repository << current.repos.list

alexkemp · Documentation

ruenoak wrote:

Hi tempvan1,
I think you need to use the whole path
/usr/sbin/service --status-all

That certainly works. However, for me so does the bare service --status-all (as an ordinary user, under chimaera, tested just now).

alexkemp · Other Issues

I had the same problem with Beowulf. It seems that the maintainer "forgot" to update devuan_version. It is still going on (notice no number):

$ cat /etc/devuan_version
chimaera

alexkemp · Hardware & System Configuration

bitcrashr wrote:

I don't know what is meant by "persistent volume"

My assumption here, not only because I'm not the original author but also because I'm far distant in time from my original use of them. My assumption, then:-

Whenever a Read-Only storage device is used, the problem becomes how to deal with data that needs to be carried over from one session to another. The fix is (for example) to format the storage so that a small section is Read-Write, and that is designated as a "Persistent Volume" (normally on a separate partition).

Added later: (I was hoping for an authoritative definition but could not find one quickly. Here is a web-page for creating a USB-stick with Persistent Storage which may be useful for some):
Create bootable USB Flash-Drive with Persistent Storage

Note the caveats for even this one:

You can’t modify system files, like the kernel. You can’t perform major system upgrades. You also can’t install hardware drivers. However, you can install most applications.

alexkemp · Other Issues

hevidevi wrote:

i used pip to install it which should give the latest version.

The version in the Repository is identical to that currently available under GitHub (I checked before install). In addition, yt-dlp -U will auto-update (just like youtube-dl) and without any of that local-bin nonsense - I have two youtube-dl's because of delays in Jessie updates, but have fixed that in Chimaera by making use of backports.

alexkemp · Other Issues

I just used Synaptic to install yt-dlp from Devuan repository (under Chimaera, using stable-backports). Problem solved. After all, all these weeks later youtube-dl has still not fixed the slowdown-issue (yt-dlp has fixed it, as have others).

alexkemp · Desktop and Multimedia

I run Chimaera-upgraded-from-Beowulf with XFCE. However, I have not had your problem, which does not help me to help you. However, in an attempt to help I ran with your report on polkit & searched in Synaptic for it; the single installed item was gir1.2-polkit-1.0 (GObject introspection data for PolicyKit), so that seems to be the one:

GObject introspection data for PolicyKit

PolicyKit is a toolkit for defining and handling the policy that
allows unprivileged processes to speak to privileged processes.
This package contains introspection data for PolicyKit.
It can be used by packages using the GIRepository format to generate
dynamic bindings.

Added:

Taking this one step further by searching for PolicyKit, there is one further item installed: cups-pk-helper (PolicyKit helper to configure cups with fine-grained privileges):

PolicyKit helper to configure cups with fine-grained privileges

This package provides a PolicyKit helper to configure cups with
fine-grained privileges. For example, it's possible to let users
enable/disable printers without requiring a password, while still
requiring a password for editing printer settings.

alexkemp · Devuan

Hi there swarfendor437

I cannot answer for SoftMaker nor pdf Studio Pro, but my recall is that I got problems with a single installation, which was KeyMon (a python-driven utility which shows the keyboard keys pressed as you press them - very useful for YouTube videos if you are recording your desktop/terminal for YT).

The issue was the departure from Python2 to a base-standard of Python3 (all of this is off the top of my head & thus prone to errors). The repository-version of KeyMon could not run on python3 and thus KeyMon was not in Chimaera & wiped from my system on upgrade. Thankfully I found a github version by the original writer with specifically added python-3 support & it works fine.

For the rest I give the full instructions that allowed me to upgrade. So, either use that or refer to the links in the OP to bake it yourself.

alexkemp · Devuan

OK, it's official (announced yesterday), Chimera is now the STABLE release:

https://www.devuan.org/os/announce/chim … 2021-10-14

Re-running the general update again & liblibreoffice-java has been updated & is no longer held back.

alexkemp · Devuan

Backports has been uncommented, resulting in LibreOffice updating to 7.2.1. The reason for that is that I appear to have done a customary system update just now exactly as Chimaera has gone from 'testing' to 'stable' (see the terminal results below):

:~$ sudo apt update && sudo apt install -f && sudo apt upgrade && sudo /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl -U && sudo /etc/cron.daily/mlocate
Get:1 https://josm.openstreetmap.de/apt alldist InRelease [4,591 B]
Get:2 https://josm.openstreetmap.de/apt alldist/universe amd64 Packages [1,083 B]
Get:3 http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera InRelease [33.8 kB]    
Get:4 http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera-security InRelease [21.3 kB]
Get:5 http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera-updates InRelease [26.4 kB]
Get:6 http://deb.devuan.org/devuan chimaera-proposed-updates InRelease [24.5 kB]
Fetched 112 kB in 3s (39.5 kB/s)    
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
1 package can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see it.
N: Repository 'http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera InRelease' changed its 'Version' value from '4.0.0' to '4.0'
N: Repository 'http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera InRelease' changed its 'Suite' value from 'testing' to 'stable'
N: Repository 'http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera-security InRelease' changed its 'Suite' value from 'testing-security' to 'stable-security'
N: Repository 'http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera-updates InRelease' changed its 'Suite' value from 'testing-updates' to 'stable-updates'
N: Repository 'http://deb.devuan.org/devuan chimaera-proposed-updates InRelease' changed its 'Suite' value from 'testing-proposed-updates' to 'chimaera-proposed-updates'
Reading package lists... Done
…
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
Abort.

A quick `sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list`, remove the comment ('#') from backports & run the original update again, with dramatic results:

:~$ sudo apt update && sudo apt install -f && sudo apt upgrade && sudo /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl -U && sudo /etc/cron.daily/mlocate
Hit:1 http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera InRelease
Get:2 http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera-security InRelease [21.3 kB]     
Get:3 http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera-updates InRelease [26.4 kB]      
Hit:4 http://deb.devuan.org/devuan chimaera-proposed-updates InRelease                   
Get:5 http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera-backports InRelease [19.3 kB]    
Hit:6 https://josm.openstreetmap.de/apt alldist InRelease                    
Get:7 http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera-security/main amd64 Packages [47.9 kB]
Get:8 http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera-backports/main amd64 Packages [89.5 kB]
Get:9 http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera-backports/non-free amd64 Packages [1,216 B]
Get:10 http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera-backports/contrib amd64 Packages [536 B]
Fetched 206 kB in 2s (131 kB/s)
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
36 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.
…
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libcmis-0.5-5v5 libjuh-java libjurt-java libqrcodegencpp1 libridl-java libunoil-java
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libbox2d2.3.0 libzxingcore1 ure-java
The following packages have been kept back:
  liblibreoffice-java
The following packages will be upgraded:
  at-spi2-core fonts-opensymbol gir1.2-atspi-2.0 gir1.2-javascriptcoregtk-4.0 gir1.2-webkit2-4.0 iproute2 josm-latest libatspi2.0-0
  libjavascriptcoregtk-4.0-18 libreoffice-base-core libreoffice-calc libreoffice-common libreoffice-core libreoffice-draw
  libreoffice-gtk3 libreoffice-help-common libreoffice-help-en-us libreoffice-impress libreoffice-java-common libreoffice-math
  libreoffice-script-provider-bsh libreoffice-script-provider-js libreoffice-style-colibre libreoffice-writer libuno-cppu3
  libuno-cppuhelpergcc3-3 libuno-purpenvhelpergcc3-3 libuno-sal3 libuno-salhelpergcc3-3 libunoloader-java libvulkan1
  libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37 orca uno-libs-private ure
35 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Need to get 135 MB/135 MB of archives.
After this operation, 12.5 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y
…

Not too long, and everyone can now expect an auto-update to Chimaera as Stable!

alexkemp · Devuan

…or at least, it would be if I hadn't made a small mistake & someone in some mirror hadn't made a bigger mistake.

Reason for Upgrade:

I was backing up all my DVDs to a USB hard-disk as ISOs & then extracting as mp4 using Handbrake. There were far too many errors in the latest version supplied with Beowulf, and Chimaera offered a much later version. That proved to be fully correct after update.

Before Upgrade:

Pages consulted:

Install page: https://www.devuan.org/os/install
Packages for sources.list: https://www.devuan.org/os/packages

Since Chimaera was reported to be almost ready for transition to Stable, after consulting the above I decided that it should be possible to make a simple replacement in my existing sources.list of 'beowulf' by 'chimaera'. That was accurate except for the commented-out Chimaera line below.

Method of Upgrade:

~$ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
~$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera main non-free contrib
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera-security main non-free contrib
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera-updates main non-free contrib
deb http://deb.devuan.org/devuan chimaera-proposed-updates main non-free contrib
#deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera-backports main non-free contrib

## package repositories
#deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ beowulf main non-free contrib 
#deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ beowulf-updates main non-free contrib 
#deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ beowulf-security main non-free contrib 
#deb http://deb.devuan.org/devuan/ beowulf-proposed main non-free contrib  
#deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ beowulf-backports main non-free contrib 

~$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Errors Experienced:

A single package (Libreoffice from Backports) gave a 404 File Not Accessible & the whole update collapsed in the middle. Unfortunately XFCE was in the middle of update & the GUI (including SLIM) failed after I tried restarting. Fortunately, I'm comfortable administering servers from a terminal.

The Fix:

This was easy once I got the point.

The problem was in a remote mirror connected with chimaera-backports. After commenting-out that line I did the update/dist-upgrade again (and again & again). The system complained, but gave some sensible suggestions, which I followed:

~$ sudo apt --fix-broken install
~$ sudo dpkg --configure -a

It's a heck of a business replacing a complete OS, of course, so I was patient and it finally completed.

The whole thing has gone from:

Devuan GNU/Linux 3.1 (beowulf) x86_64
to:
Devuan GNU/Linux 4 (chimaera) x86_64

Good job, veteran Admins!

(updated (speling))

alexkemp · News & Announcements

fsmithred wrote:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -f && sudo apt upgrade
…I'm still on beowulf-3.
…You can check to see what got upgraded or installed by looking in /var/log/apt/history.log.

Many thanks to all those that responded.

It seems that I *am* on beowulf-3.1.0, but that the release info was not updated.

I see from the Release Announcement that Beowulf-3.1 was released with linux-image-4.19.0-14. The upgrade obtained 24 hours ago was linux-image-4.19.0-17. The command-line shown is for "upgrade". That strongly suggest that yes, I did get a 3.1 upgrade. However, what I did NOT get was an upgraded /etc/os-release, which has led me astray.

The remarks that some 'sudo's were missed from some commands are also obviously accurate.

Sorry about the size of the code that follows. This is the tail of /var/log/apt/history.log:

Start-Date: 2021-06-23  00:12:23
Commandline: apt upgrade
Requested-By: alexk (1000)
Install: linux-image-4.19.0-17-amd64:amd64 (4.19.194-1, automatic)
Upgrade: linux-libc-dev:amd64 (4.19.181-1, 4.19.194-1),
         libxml2-utils:amd64 (2.9.4+dfsg1-7+deb10u1, 2.9.4+dfsg1-7+deb10u2),
         libgnutls-openssl27:amd64 (3.6.7-4+deb10u6, 3.6.7-4+deb10u7),
         fig2dev:amd64 (1:3.2.7a-5+deb10u3, 1:3.2.7a-5+deb10u4),
         mariadb-common:amd64 (1:10.3.27-0+deb10u1, 1:10.3.29-0+deb10u1),
         libklibc:amd64 (2.0.6-1, 2.0.6-1+deb10u1),
         isc-dhcp-common:amd64 (4.4.1-2, 4.4.1-2+deb10u1),
         libfluidsynth1:amd64 (1.1.11-1, 1.1.11-1+deb10u1),
         shim-helpers-amd64-signed:amd64 (1+15+1533136590.3beb971+7+deb10u1, 1+15.4+5~deb10u1),
         linux-image-amd64:amd64 (4.19+105+deb10u11, 4.19+105+deb10u12),
         libgcrypt20:amd64 (1.8.4-5, 1.8.4-5+deb10u1),
         libglib2.0-bin:amd64 (2.58.3-2+deb10u2, 2.58.3-2+deb10u3),
         libhogweed4:amd64 (3.4.1-1, 3.4.1-1+deb10u1),
         shim-unsigned:amd64 (15+1533136590.3beb971-7+deb10u1, 15.4-5~deb10u1),
         python-libxml2:amd64 (2.9.4+dfsg1-7+deb10u1, 2.9.4+dfsg1-7+deb10u2),
         shim-signed:amd64 (1.33+15+1533136590.3beb971-7, 1.36~1+deb10u2+15.4-5~deb10u1),
         libglib2.0-data:amd64 (2.58.3-2+deb10u2, 2.58.3-2+deb10u3),
         libnettle6:amd64 (3.4.1-1, 3.4.1-1+deb10u1),
         libxml2:amd64 (2.9.4+dfsg1-7+deb10u1, 2.9.4+dfsg1-7+deb10u2),
         libmariadb3:amd64 (1:10.3.27-0+deb10u1, 1:10.3.29-0+deb10u1),
         libgnutls30:amd64 (3.6.7-4+deb10u6, 3.6.7-4+deb10u7),
         xfce4-weather-plugin:amd64 (0.8.10-1, 0.8.10-1+deb10u1),
         josm-latest:amd64 (1.5.svn17921, 1.5.svn17938),
         libgnutls-dane0:amd64 (3.6.7-4+deb10u6, 3.6.7-4+deb10u7),
         isc-dhcp-client:amd64 (4.4.1-2, 4.4.1-2+deb10u1),
         klibc-utils:amd64 (2.0.6-1, 2.0.6-1+deb10u1),
         libglib2.0-0:amd64 (2.58.3-2+deb10u2, 2.58.3-2+deb10u3),
         shim-signed-common:amd64 (1.33+15+1533136590.3beb971-7, 1.36~1+deb10u2+15.4-5~deb10u1)
End-Date: 2021-06-23  00:15:03

alexkemp · News & Announcements

fsmithred wrote:

berni51 wrote:
Will a simple apt update/upgrade do the job and bring my systems up to 3.1?
Yes. Regular update/upgrade will get you there.

Unfortunately not on my system.

Each day I use:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -f && sudo apt upgrade

Today that got me kernel 4.19.0-17 + an odd message about a potential 28 further upgrades. Re-running the commands now produces zero result. I'm still on beowulf-3.

Searching then showed this page & the possibility for beowulf-3.1.0 - but not for me.

This is sources:

$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ beowulf main non-free contrib 
## package repositories
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ beowulf-updates main non-free contrib 
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ beowulf-security main non-free contrib 
deb http://deb.devuan.org/devuan/ beowulf-proposed main non-free contrib  
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ beowulf-backports main non-free contrib

Is this a clue?:

$ sudo apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade
Hit:1 http://deb.devuan.org/merged beowulf InRelease
Hit:2 http://deb.devuan.org/merged beowulf-updates InRelease
Hit:3 http://deb.devuan.org/merged beowulf-security InRelease
Hit:4 http://deb.devuan.org/devuan beowulf-proposed InRelease
Hit:5 http://deb.devuan.org/merged beowulf-backports InRelease               
Hit:6 https://josm.openstreetmap.de/apt alldist InRelease                    
Reading package lists... Done
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to acquire the dpkg frontend lock (/var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend), are you root?

Those are zero-byte dpkg/lock + dpkg/lock-frontend files, but they appear to be long-established. Removing them made zero difference.

The final item is that I've tried editing 20auto-upgrades (first line from 1 to 0):

$ cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades
APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "0";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1";

That seems to have made zero difference.

I'm out of ideas. All help appreciated.

alexkemp · Desktop and Multimedia

Here is an attempt to make a summary of the whole thing, in one place:-

System:

Devuan GNU/Linux 3 (beowulf)
DM: XFCE 4.12
LM: SLiM 1.3.6-5.1+devuan6

Held-back packages:

libpolkit-qt-1-1
libpolkit-qt5-1-1

Clue within Beowulf Release Notes:

The default session manager for all desktops is logind (libpam-elogind).

Scary Fix:

$ sudo apt install libpam-elogind

The above switches the session manager from consolekit (which appears to be deprecated) to logind; these are mutually-exclusive. One driving force of this appears to be SLiM (the Login Manager that refuses to die). Switching the Session Manager also means switching the Policy Manager.

At this point everything worked fine, with the sole exception of every menu-link within the DM that required an elevation of privilege. A good example of this was Menu:System|Synaptic (the menu came up, but nothing happened when clicked). Further, all of the DM Menu:Logout options were dimmed (inaccessible) except for 'Logout' itself. A further clue was that $ sudo /usr/sbin/synaptic worked fine, plus Synaptic itself then operated in expected fashion & allowed a system update, including of the previously-withheld packages.

In for a penny, in for a pound (this removed >200 packages) (yikes):

$ sudo apt autoremove

Installing libpam-elogind had removed libsystemd0 (hurrah!), so no surprise that the system then required a restart to complete (just like Windows) (boo!):

$ sudo reboot

After restart, the whole system functioned in normal fashion. DM menu-links such as Synaptic & Logout now all work normally. All of that occurred without any further config required.

alexkemp · Desktop and Multimedia

Thank you everyone, my system seems back in order following a restart (sudo reboot). Menu synaptic + shutdown/restart, etc. dialogs now all function as normal, no extra config required. Reboot + login all functioned perfectly, again without any reconfig.

I was *very* nervous restarting, and with good reason. I've been on both local + remote machines where I've suffered outages & then had to endure hours-long manual re-config from the terminal following a restart, including grub hacking. Not fun at all.

The one helpful feature to it all this trouble was discovering that ~/.xsession-errors was >3GB. Diagnosing that is going to have to wait.

alexkemp · Desktop and Multimedia

Thanks for such a fast reply, Altoid. Thanks also for such an excellent diagnosis provided within your earlier thread. Surely the very best advice is given from those that have met the same/similar problem & fixed it.

I swallowed hard & went ahead:-

$ sudo apt install libpam-elogind
…
The following additional packages will be installed:
  elogind libelogind0 libpolkit-backend-elogind-1-0 libpolkit-gobject-elogind-1-0
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  consolekit libpam-ck-connector libpolkit-backend-consolekit-1-0 libpolkit-gobject-consolekit-1-0 libsystemd0
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  elogind libelogind0 libpam-elogind libpolkit-backend-elogind-1-0 libpolkit-gobject-elogind-1-0
0 upgraded, 5 newly installed, 5 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,144 kB of archives.
After this operation, 2,241 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y
…
dpkg: libsystemd0:amd64: dependency problems, but removing anyway as you requested:
 xserver-xorg-core depends on libsystemd0.
 vlc-plugin-base:amd64 depends on libsystemd0.
 sane-utils depends on libsystemd0.
 samba-libs:amd64 depends on libsystemd0.
 rsyslog depends on libsystemd0.
 rpcbind depends on libsystemd0.
 pulseaudio depends on libsystemd0.
 modemmanager depends on libsystemd0 (>= 209).
 libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37:amd64 depends on libsystemd0.
 libpulse0:amd64 depends on libsystemd0.
 libjavascriptcoregtk-4.0-18:amd64 depends on libsystemd0.
 libapt-pkg5.0:amd64 depends on libsystemd0 (>= 221).
 irqbalance depends on libsystemd0.
 gvfs-daemons depends on libsystemd0.
 cups-daemon depends on libsystemd0.
…
dpkg: libpolkit-backend-consolekit-1-0:amd64: dependency problems, but removing anyway as you requested:
…
dpkg: consolekit: dependency problems, but removing anyway as you requested:
…
dpkg: libpolkit-gobject-consolekit-1-0:amd64: dependency problems, but removing anyway as you requested:
…

Well, I went across just now to YouTube & I still have sound, so maybe those scary warnings meant nothing. However, I cannot login to Synaptic; I can launch it from the Terminal (root login with sudo, and those two held packages are now released, so I updated), but the Desktop menu link does not work.

We'll see what happens after a restart (quiver!), but for now many thanks, and it looks like I may have a clear system again. Hooray!

alexkemp · Desktop and Multimedia

System:

Devuan GNU/Linux 3 (beowulf)
DM: XFCE 4.12 + Slim

At some point during daily updates - possibly on upgrade to Beowolf - I found that Synaptic had auto-pinned (is 'pin' the right word?) two packages; they now show as "2 packages will be held back and not upgraded" on every update. I have zero idea why this happened. I want to sort it if at all possible, and am posting here in hope of getting some help to do that.

These are the held-back packages:

Package: libpolkit-qt-1-1
Version: 0.112.0-5

Package: libpolkit-qt5-1-1
Version: 0.112.0-5

Warning! The following may be a wrongful black-hole that I fell down during a patch of prior research:-

The research threw up virtually nothing. One of the few scraps was in this forum, within a question on problems to shutdown or reboot after update to beowulf. The Questioner was asked to show policykit related packages, and his results matched mine almost exactly (although I do NOT have any shutdown problems):-

$ dpkg -l | egrep "consolekit|elogind|policykit|polkit|libpam"
ii  consolekit                                1.2.1-8                             amd64
ii  gir1.2-polkit-1.0                         0.105-25+devuan8                    amd64
ii  libpam-cap:amd64                          1:2.25-2                            amd64
ii  libpam-ck-connector:amd64                 1.2.1-8                             amd64
ii  libpam-gnome-keyring:amd64                3.28.2-5                            amd64
ii  libpam-modules:amd64                      1.3.1-5                             amd64
ii  libpam-modules-bin                        1.3.1-5                             amd64
ii  libpam-runtime                            1.3.1-5                             all
ii  libpam0g:amd64                            1.3.1-5                             amd64
ii  libpolkit-agent-1-0:amd64                 0.105-25+devuan8                    amd64
ii  libpolkit-backend-1-0                     0.105-25+devuan8                    all
ii  libpolkit-backend-consolekit-1-0:amd64    0.105-25+devuan8                    amd64
ii  libpolkit-gobject-1-0                     0.105-25+devuan8                    all
ii  libpolkit-gobject-consolekit-1-0:amd64    0.105-25+devuan8                    amd64
ii  libpolkit-qt-1-1:amd64                    0.112.0-5                           amd64
ii  libpolkit-qt5-1-1:amd64                   0.112.0-5                           amd64
ii  policykit-1                               0.105-25+devuan8                    amd64
ii  policykit-1-gnome                         0.105-7                             amd64

The Beowolf Release notes stated that:-

Two session management systems are available in Devuan Beowulf:

 - consolekit
 - logind (elogind and libpam-elogind)

These session managers are mutually exclusive; …

The default session manager for all desktops is logind (libpam-elogind).
Xfce and Cinnamon will work with either logind or consolekit.

The latest post by rolfie stated that switching from consolekit to logind had fixed all issues on his machine. I was willing to try that, but to do so would remove a vast amount of existing packages:-

$ sudo apt install libpolkit-backend-elogind-1-0 libpolkit-gobject-elogind-1-0
…
The following additional packages will be installed:
  elogind libelogind0 libpam-elogind
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  bleachbit breeze colord consolekit drkonqi kactivitymanagerd kde-runtime kde-style-qtcurve-qt5 kdelibs5-plugins kdenlive
  keditbookmarks khelpcenter khelpcenter4 kinit kio kpackagelauncherqml kpat libkf5declarative5 libkf5kcmutils5 libkf5kdegames7
  libkf5kdelibs4support5 libkf5kdelibs4support5-bin libkf5khtml-bin libkf5khtml5 libkf5newstuff5 libkf5newstuffcore5
  libkf5notifyconfig5 libkf5parts-plugins libkf5parts5 libkf5quickaddons5 libkf5xmlrpcclient5 libokular5core8 libpam-ck-connector
  libpolkit-backend-consolekit-1-0 libpolkit-gobject-consolekit-1-0 libpolkit-qt-1-1 libsystemd0 okular okular-extra-backends
  packagekit packagekit-tools policykit-1-gnome qml-module-org-kde-newstuff rtkit slim synaptic task-xfce-desktop xiccd
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  elogind libelogind0 libpam-elogind libpolkit-backend-elogind-1-0 libpolkit-gobject-elogind-1-0

That is way too much pain to fix this little issue (including no means to login after doing it).

Is anyone able to help, please? In particular, why did these packages get held back in the first place?

alexkemp · News & Announcements

boycottsystemd wrote:

I can't mount logical disk

Hi boycottsystemd. That error msg suggests that you are attempting a root operation whilst logged in as a normal user. If so, then it is probably a setup issue.

I do not think that this topic is the place for hard/software support, but here is a typical Arch-linux help-link: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=180353

alexkemp · News & Announcements

figdev wrote:

you are incorrect that devuan or debian "needs to" support non-free software.
you incorrectly refer to those who disagree with your position as "zealots"

Hmm. I'm sorry that you are upset by my comments.

One of my early experiences with Debian was of a thwarted install attempt with a friend due to their device employing only Wifi, no Ethernet. The installer that I used did not have any non-free software in it and, whilst their device worked to a point, it could not be updated and that left it crippled. My position, therefore, is that Debian/Devuan NEEDS to have non-free software support for the sake of such machines.

I came up through the era of software modems, which iirc never provided any Linux support. Hardware modems were orders of magnitude more expensive. If you could not afford a hardware modem you could not run Linux.

I understand and support the position of all that want to stay pure & close to the ideal of Free Software. If they then say that the installer should not offer non-free binaries (to enforce their ideals), I believe that a line has been crossed into zealotry and oppose it.

I see that you have stated that “there is nothing wrong with doing so” (including non-free software in the installer), and therefore am a little puzzled at your upset. Anyway, maybe this will help to make my previous post a little clearer.

alexkemp · News & Announcements

Essikario wrote:

The only very very very bad thing is the use of "contrib" and "non-free" with the default install …
Debian: only free software (good) + systemd (bad)
Devuan: proprietary software (very very very bad)

You need to persuade computer equipment manufacturers to all provide source code for their device microcode (good luck with that), or to stop using closed-source microcode devices. Whilst the mfcs continue to only provide binary blobs Devuan (and Debian) will need to support ‘non-free’ software.

Debian & Devuan are identical in their treatment of non-free sources.

Before loading Devuan Jessie on this computer I had Debian Jessie loaded. sources.list for me had “main contrib non-free” else no wifi & my grandkids would stop visiting.

You are perfectly free to howl at the moon and spit into the wind as much as you wish. However, the whole of the world uses wifi/you-name-it that requires binary blobs to be loaded as microcode. If that is not present at installation the install will fail for many & yet another potential user will tell all their friends that “Devuan is broken”.

I understand that many zealots are proud of walking around with no noses. In my opinion that is a foolish decision, and an impractical one. Nevertheless I will support to the hilt your decision to cut off your own nose to spite the closed-source manufacturers. I draw the line, however, at any demand for everyone else to get out their knives.

alexkemp · News & Announcements

I registered explicitly to state how happy I am with Ascii:– naturally it took ages to update, but my system is now much more sprightly in both startup & operation and a number of outstanding irritations have been fixed with the upgrades. Most excellent.

alexk@ng3:~$ neofetch
   ..,,;;;::;,..                   alexk@ng3 
           `':ddd;:,.              --------- 
                 `'dPPd:,.         OS: Devuan GNU/Linux testing/unstable x86_64 
                     `:b$$b`.      Model: 90BJ008CUK Lenovo H30-05 
                        'P$$$d`    Kernel: 4.9.0-6-amd64 
                         .$$$$$`   Uptime: 4 days, 18 hours, 38 minutes 
                         ;$$$$$P   Packages: 1999 
                      .:P$$$$$$`   Shell: bash 4.4.12 
                  .,:b$$$$$$$;'    Resolution: 1366x768 
             .,:dP$$$$$$$$b:'      DE: XFCE 
      .,:;db$$$$$$$$$$Pd'`         WM: Xfwm4 
 ,db$$$$$$$$$$$$$$b:'`             WM Theme: Default 
:$$$$$$$$$$$$b:'`                  Theme: Clearlooks-Phenix-DarkPurpy [GTK2], Adwaita [GTK3] 
 `$$$$$bd:''`                      Icons: Oxygen [GTK2], Adwaita [GTK3] 
   `'''`                           Terminal: xfce4-terminal 
                                   CPU: AMD A8-7410 APU with AMD Radeon R5 Graphics (4) @ 2.2GHz 
                                   GPU: AMD Radeon R4/R5 Graphics 
                                   Memory: 4078MB / 7403MB 
                                    
                                   ████████████████████████

Some small changes from the upgrade advice given on https://devuan.org/os/documentation/dev … e-to-ascii (mine was a fully-updated Devuan Jessie on a 2-years-old EFI AMD64 Lenovo H30-05 A8 desktop):–

~~Ascii is one of the distributions within https://auto.mirror.devuan.org, so use that within sources.list~~
The advice from golinux (the Administrator here) is to use deb.devuan.org as per the advice within https://devuan.org/os/etc/apt/sources.list. There is no need to log into your bank when updating, so I guess that a secure connection via HTTPS is a little over the top.
Use “main contrib non-free” rather than just “main”, else your wifi (etc.) may not work after

# cat /etc/apt/sources.list
## package repositories
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ ascii main contrib non-free
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ ascii-updates main contrib non-free
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ ascii-security main contrib non-free
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ ascii-backports main contrib non-free
# apt-get upgrade devuan-keyring
# apt-get update
# apt-get dist-upgrade
# apt autoremove
# apt-get clean

PS
‘apt-transport-https’ needs to be installed in order to join the rest of the human race within the 21st Century if using HTTPS rather than HTTP, but golinux has stated that HTTPS support will eventually be removed from sources.list. I originally updated using HTTPS, but after changing sources.list to the above & updating again I discovered a missing deb, so NOT using HTTPS is good advice.

Glitches
There has been enough time to catch only one so far, and it is a universal rather than a Devuan-specific issue:–

Conky
${pre_exec} has been removed in v1.10.6 conky (a dumb decision, imo).

Either pin the version from Jessie, or use (eg) ${execi 65000 lsb_release -ds}.

Whilst on the subject, the Conky man page still advises using http:// weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/observations/metar/stations/ (withdrawn 2016-08-03 and gives a 404). http://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/data/observat … /stations/ is a drop-in replacement, providing the identical METARs.

Many thanks to all that have worked on getting Ascii fit for release.

2018-05-17 Edit: Added neofetch output obtained after upgrade to ascii.
2018-05-15 Edit: Modifed sources.list advice following input from golinux.

The officially official Devuan Forum!

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#340 Devuan » Updating to Chimaera - Marginally Painless » 2021-10-03 12:31:26

Reason for Upgrade:

Before Upgrade:

Method of Upgrade:

Errors Experienced:

The Fix:

#341 Re: News & Announcements » Devuan Beowulf 3.1.0 point release » 2021-06-23 23:12:20

#342 Re: News & Announcements » Devuan Beowulf 3.1.0 point release » 2021-06-23 01:32:28

#343 Re: Desktop and Multimedia » Packages in Synaptic that are 'Held Back' (how to fix that?) » 2021-02-27 11:43:05

#344 Re: Desktop and Multimedia » Packages in Synaptic that are 'Held Back' (how to fix that?) » 2021-02-26 23:56:50

#345 Re: Desktop and Multimedia » Packages in Synaptic that are 'Held Back' (how to fix that?) » 2021-02-26 17:07:00

#346 Desktop and Multimedia » Packages in Synaptic that are 'Held Back' (how to fix that?) » 2021-02-26 12:41:12

#347 Re: News & Announcements » Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate » 2018-05-17 21:42:50

#348 Re: News & Announcements » Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate » 2018-05-17 01:00:03

#349 Re: News & Announcements » Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate » 2018-05-16 21:24:56

#350 Re: News & Announcements » Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate » 2018-05-14 02:38:09

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