[Mageia-dev] Orphans - those poor orphans . . .

Pascal Terjan pterjan at gmail.com
Sun Jan 8 17:01:10 CET 2012


On Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 14:24, Wolfgang Bornath <molch.b at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 2012/1/7 Sander Lepik <sander.lepik at eesti.ee>:
>> 07.01.2012 13:39, Wolfgang Bornath kirjutas:
>>>
>>> Of course this is one way to find bugs in packages. But what about the
>>> documented (in German) case where
>>>  - after fresh installation, reboot (ok) and updates right after
>>> installation I was presented with a list of more than 100 "orphans".
>>>  - I ran 'urpme --auto-orphans' and rebooted
>>>  - several system services (which started successfully after
>>> installation) refused to start now because of missing files
>>>
>>> Of course urpmi was not the culprit because it only checks
>>> dependencies. But that did matter in that situation. The auto-orphans
>>> function obviously listed packages which may have no dependencies but
>>> are needed by the system. That's why I do not complain about urpmi but
>>> about the whole function. As long as this function is only based on
>>> package dependencies it is not safe to use it.
>>
>> Did you choose custom install and unchecked some options? Or did you use
>> LiveCD maybe? Anyway.. function is not to blame. Next time copy those
>> packages that are going to be uninstalled. And they can be rechecked. Which
>> are needed and why they get orphaned.
>
> Used the full DVD (32-bit) Mageia 2 Alpha 2
>  - minimal install with X
>  - after installation and reboot everything was ok
>  - setup the package media (dedicated mirror) and did 'urpmi -auto-update'
>  - I did NOT install or remove one single package manually
>  - after that urpmi showed a list of more than 100 orphans
>  - used 'urpme -auto-orphans
>  - at reboot the start messages showed several errors concerning
> crond, network-up, postfix, display manager, etc. - system start
> stopped before x was started. Repeated the boot process with same
> result.
>
> A side question is why I got so many orphans in a minimal system with
> only around 700 packages in total and only around 2 or 3 dozens of
> updates (all this happened not long after Alpha 2 release.)
>
> Of course urpmi is not the culprit, it is the shortcomings of the
> function as it is. It should just not be there if its use could lead
> to such behavior, no matter where the cause comes from. Simply said: a
> gasoline brand should not be sold if it could do damage to the car's
> motor, no matter which of the components of the fluid causes the
> damage..
>
> Anyhow, I will repeat the same operation when Alpha 2 is released in a
> couple of days and as soon as the system shows orphans I will document
> that list and (if the same problem arises) dmesg output if available.
> What else do you need for a reasonable documentation?

Thanks, this is obviously an installation bug as those packages should
be listed as requested.


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