Community ISO Testing

[Rocky]

That's what the 'sudo apt-get -f install' is for. It tries to pick up the pieces the incomplete dpkg -i left behind........

ah! Thanks grizzler - now I see - very rewarding peeling away the layers to understanding how the nuts and bolts work.

[Zill]

^ +1

From "man apt-get":

-f, --fix-broken
Fix; attempt to correct a system with broken dependencies in place. This option, when used with install/remove, can omit any packages to permit APT to deduce a likely solution.
...
It is possible that a system's dependency structure can be so corrupt as to require manual intervention (which usually means using dpkg --remove to eliminate some of the offending packages)...

[Fargo]

I just installed, SolydX 32bit. I love the installer. Is that new? I don't remember it from before. Its much nicer than some of the other installers I've seen lately. Also the 'Welcome' screen is fantastic. Lots of good info in there and a quick way to install software. All I installed was the codecs. I never checked the other items so forgive my ignorance, but if I click the 'install' button on the graphics page for example, can I install only Digikam? Or will it install everything listed on the page?

Issues: Really the only issue I had was after install my system hung up and didn't restart. Is this normal? It seems to be running ok.

Suggestion: The grub timeout screen could have shorter duration. Since we are not tracking Stable it seems less likely to need to boot into other kernels or anything, so a short time of 1 second or something seems reasonable just to splash the screen to people if they do need to boot into a help mode.

Last question: Are these repos all finalized? That is can I send the machine out the door to a needy person and know that they will get security updates and etc.

Thanks for all the hardwork guys. Everything looks great.

[grizzler]

I just installed, SolydX 32bit. I love the installer. Is that new? I don't remember it from before. Its much nicer than some of the other installers I've seen lately. Also the 'Welcome' screen is fantastic. Lots of good info in there and a quick way to install software. All I installed was the codecs. I never checked the other items so forgive my ignorance, but if I click the 'install' button on the graphics page for example, can I install only Digikam? Or will it install everything listed on the page?

It will install all of them. At the top of that page it says:
"When you click the install button all listed applications are going to be installed on your system. You can use the software manager to install them separately."

You can always visit the Welcome sequence again, by the way. It's in the menu.

Issues: Really the only issue I had was after install my system hung up and didn't restart. Is this normal?

Not really, but I've seen this happen with several of the distros I've installed over the years. Sometimes the same ISO will even produce a different result on different attempts on the same machine. I've given up trying to make sense of that...

Suggestion: The grub timeout screen could have shorter duration. Since we are not tracking Stable it seems less likely to need to boot into other kernels or anything, so a short time of 1 second or something seems reasonable just to splash the screen to people if they do need to boot into a help mode.

Nah... Not everyone has the same quick response time.
Seriously, five seconds as a default seems fine to me. You can always change it (in /etc/default/grub - needs 'sudo update-grub' to become effective) if you want.

Last question: Are these repos all finalized? That is can I send the machine out the door to a needy person and know that they will get security updates and etc.

Jessie isn't Stable yet, so new packages will appear almost every day, but this should really only be bugfixes, so I wouldn't expect anything disruptive to show up.
The sources.list is the same as for the 64-bit ISOs. It includes the security repo for Jessie.

[Fargo]

It will install all of them. At the top of that page it says:
"When you click the install button all listed applications are going to be installed on your system. You can use the software manager to install them separately."

You can always visit the Welcome sequence again, by the way. It's in the menu.

Thanks, I missed that. Glad I didn't click install. I don't see a need to install all of them. If its not too difficult to do, it might be a good idea to allow selection of individual programs. But then again, hopefully new users will read the screen more closely than I did and will just go to the software center. Or they might install all of them to see what they like.

I'll make sure I leave the Welcome screen on the computer when I send it off to its new owners.

Issues: Really the only issue I had was after install my system hung up and didn't restart. Is this normal?

Not really, but I've seen this happen with several of the distros I've installed over the years. Sometimes the same ISO will even produce a different result on different attempts on the same machine. I've given up trying to make sense of that...

I have seen it before too. I just wanted to make sure I had a good install.

Suggestion: The grub timeout screen could have shorter duration. Since we are not tracking Stable it seems less likely to need to boot into other kernels or anything, so a short time of 1 second or something seems reasonable just to splash the screen to people if they do need to boot into a help mode.

Nah... Not everyone has the same quick response time.
Seriously, five seconds as a default seems fine to me. You can always change it (in /etc/default/grub - needs 'sudo update-grub' to become effective) if you want.

Fair enough.

Last question: Are these repos all finalized? That is can I send the machine out the door to a needy person and know that they will get security updates and etc.

Jessie isn't Stable yet, so new packages will appear almost every day, but this should really only be bugfixes, so I wouldn't expect anything disruptive to show up.
The sources.list is the same as for the 64-bit ISOs. It includes the security repo for Jessie.

I knew Jesse wasn't Stable yet. I was more concerned about the address of the SolydKX repos themselves changing than updates coming from Jessie. I feel comfortable enough with the stability of Jessie to use it and send it off to others. As long as the SolydXK repos remain the same and the new users will continue to get the updates I'm good.

[Zill]

I just installed, SolydX 32bit. I love the installer. Is that new? I don't remember it from before. Its much nicer than some of the other installers I've seen lately. Also the 'Welcome' screen is fantastic. Lots of good info in there and a quick way to install software. All I installed was the codecs. I never checked the other items so forgive my ignorance, but if I click the 'install' button on the graphics page for example, can I install only Digikam? Or will it install everything listed on the page?

If you have installed SolydX, why do you want to install Digikam? This is a KDE application that, on installation, will try to drag in most of KDE with it! While this may not exactly break your system, it will certainly add tons of bloat that will then need to be maintained with larger updates.

Code: Select all

roger@dino:~$ sudo apt-get -s install digikam
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  digikam digikam-data digikam-private-libs docbook-xsl dolphin ffmpegthumbs
  javascript-common kate-data katepart kde-baseapps-bin kde-baseapps-data
  kde-runtime kde-runtime-data kdelibs-bin kdelibs5-data kdelibs5-plugins
  kdoctools kfind konqueror konqueror-nsplugins kpart-webkit libastro1
  libattica0.4 libbaloocore4 libbaloofiles4 libbalooqueryparser4
  libbaloowidgets4 libbalooxapian4 libdbusmenu-qt2 libdlrestrictions1 libepub0
  libgpgme++2 libgps21 libimage-exiftool-perl libiodbc2 libjs-jquery
  libkactivities-bin libkactivities-models1 libkactivities6
  libkatepartinterfaces4 libkcmutils4 libkdcraw-data libkdcraw23
  libkde3support4 libkdeclarative5 libkdecore5 libkdesu5 libkdeui5
  libkdewebkit5 libkdnssd4 libkemoticons4 libkexiv2-11 libkexiv2-data
  libkfile4 libkfilemetadata4 libkhtml5 libkio5 libkipi-data libkipi11
  libkjsapi4 libkjsembed4 libkmediaplayer4 libknewstuff3-4 libknotifyconfig4
  libkntlm4 libkonq-common libkonq5-templates libkonq5abi1
  libkonqsidebarplugin4a libkparts4 libkpty4 libkrosscore4 libktexteditor4
  libkxmlrpcclient4 libmarblewidget19 libnepomuk4 libnepomukcore4
  libnepomukquery4a libnepomukutils4 libntrack-qt4-1 libntrack0 libpgf6
  libplasma3 libpolkit-qt-1-1 libpoppler-qt4-4 libqca2 libqextserialport1
  libqjson0 libqmobipocket1 libqt4-qt3support libqt4-sql-sqlite libqtlocation1
  libquazip1 libruby2.1 libshp2 libsolid4 libsoprano4 libsqlite0
  libssh-gcrypt-4 libstreamanalyzer0 libstreams0 libthreadweaver4
  libxml2-utils libyaml-0-2 libzip2 marble-data marble-plugins
  nepomuk-core-data ntrack-module-libnl-0 opencv-data phonon
  phonon-backend-vlc plasma-scriptengine-javascript ruby ruby2.1
  rubygems-integration soprano-daemon vlc-plugin-pulse
0 upgraded, 118 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

IMHO, mixing XFCE and KDE applications is not a good idea and should be avoided (as far as possible) if you want a reliable and efficient system.

Shotwell is installed in SolydX by default and so I would really think long and hard about adding Digikam.

[Fargo]

If you have installed SolydX, why do you want to install Digikam? This is a KDE application that, on installation, will try to drag in most of KDE with it! While this may not exactly break your system, it will certainly add tons of bloat that will then need to be maintained with larger updates.
Shotwell is installed in SolydX by default and so I would really think long and hard about adding Digikam.

Well Digikam was just the example that I used. But you really made a point for me. I was trying to figure out why the Welcome screen had a one touch 'install all' button that would install Digikam and Shotwell and Gimp into the system, when all that is really needed is Shotwell. (Or in the case of SolydK Digikam.)

I'll admit that I never even checked if Shotwell was installed. I was just reading through the Welcome screen and saw I could install the photo programs. As I am sure many new users will do. Given that Shotwell is already installed in SolydX and Digikam is in SolydK, maybe it would be better to remove the 'install' button for those programs that are already installed in their respective version. The info is still great though, keep it in there. Maybe the wording could be changed to say that one of the options is already installed and ready to go. The same could be done with any other programs that are already installed in the system or that would bring in larger libraries into either version. Otherwise, I really like the Welcome screen. It adds a nice professional touch

[Fargo]

I now have SolydX 32bit installed on 2 different systems. Unfortunately, both systems periodically freeze up during shutdown. As I recall, it seems like its always been after running Update Manager and doing updates. I haven't found a sure way to reproduce the issue yet. But it does seem to be a real issue. If it makes a difference, both installs also hung up after the installation was complete.

[grizzler]

We'll be building new 32-bit ISOs this weekend. I'll keep this in mind and run some extra checks with the SolydX version.

[Fargo]

We'll be building new 32-bit ISOs this weekend. I'll keep this in mind and run some extra checks with the SolydX version.

That sounds great. I was hoping to send off these systems this weekend, but I'll wait for the new ISOs to give them a test. Thanks for looking into it. I'll post more if I can figure anything else out.

PS. It seems like the icon for the update manager was not visible in the taskbar at time of shutdown either. So it might be something with the UM.

[Fargo]

Both of my SolydX 32bit systems have had issues with locking up on shutdown. It seems to be fairly consistant. Could this be a Plymouth issue? I look forward to the new isos. Hopefully you have found something.

[grizzler]

It wouldn't surprise me if this had to do with Plymouth (don't you just love it when you can put the blame on something that's been known to cause problems, if you really have no idea what could be wrong? ).

Seriously, don't expect too much. I've built a new ISO (no, it's not on the download page yet - I'll let you know when it is) and that hasn't given me any shutdown issues at all, not in a VM and not on a real machine. But neither did the previous one, so that doesn't say much. I have one other (real) machine to try and if that doesn't have any issues either, I'll upload the ISO.

If it still causes problems for you, you could try switching off Plymouth to see if that makes any difference.

[grizzler]

No problems there either, so I could upload the ISO. If the upload server hadn't lost its hostname, that is...

Edit 15:55 CET
Uploaded using another hostname on the solydxk.nl domain. Seems to have worked. We'll know for certain in about five minutes...

Edit 16:05 CET
Yes.

http://downloads.solydxk.nl/ce/testing/

The SolydK ISO should appear later.

[Arjen Balfoort]

Let me know if I have to clean up the other ones.

[Fargo]

FYI - I turned off Plymouth via the Plymouth Manager in my old install. It still hung up on my once. So it may not be Plymouth but something else.

I've give the new ISO a try later this week if I can. THANK YOU.

[grizzler]

Let me know if I have to clean up the other ones.

Yes, please. I don't think keeping the old ones is useful.

[grizzler]

FYI - I turned off Plymouth via the Plymouth Manager in my old install. It still hung up on my once. So it may not be Plymouth but something else.

In that case I'm afraid I wouldn't know what else it could be, as I can't reproduce the problem at all...

[Zill]

Fargo: Just a thought! Are your machines stand-alone or are they networked?

There have been shutdown problems due to mounted NFS and CIFS shares not being properly unmounted before the wifi connection to the LAN is dropped and this causes a hang on shutdown.

My fix is to use autofs to mount my NFS shares, rather than include them in /etc/fstab. This allows the remote directories to be mounted only as and when required and then unmount automatically when not in use, allowing normal shutdown to occur when required.

[Deleted User 2764]

New 32-bit ISO's are ready. Look for them here: http://downloads.solydxk.nl/ce/testing/

SolydK 32: solydk32_201503.iso
SolydX 32: solydx32_201503.iso

Also, this is my last iso I'm doing. My ISP upload speeds are incredibly slow (and I don't have the funds to upgrade to a faster plan) so Grizzler will be doing both ISOs from now on. I'll still be monitoring the forums, and after May 1st I'm planning to step up my learning Python in hopes that I might be able to help with other development. We'll see how it all goes.

Meanwhile, I'm still here. Just not doing the 32-bit SolydK isos.

[Fargo]

Fargo: Just a thought! Are your machines stand-alone or are they networked?

There have been shutdown problems due to mounted NFS and CIFS shares not being properly unmounted before the wifi connection to the LAN is dropped and this causes a hang on shutdown.

I do have a home network and they were plugged into the LAN. I don't know if they were ever mounted up or not though. They were just plugged in to have NET access.