Category Archives: Administrative

Busy

The carpenters are here today with some final cabinet installation issues, and the pool pump died, so I’ve been pulling the old one, finding a new one, and replacing it, before the summer mustard algae in south Florida crawls over the coping, creeps into our bedroom and smothers us in our slumber.

Fedora Update Update (Part N)

For those few of you who are fascinated/horrified by my computer travails, here’s the current status.

After removing Open Office and a Fortran compiler to resolve some otherwise unresolvable (at least by me) dependency issues, I finished the upgrade from Fedora Core 3 to Core 4 via yum update (at least I think I did–how do I know?). I rebooted, and it rebooted. I haven’t attempted to reinstall Open Office yet, so I don’t know if that will work, but flush with seeming victory over the machine, I decided to push my luck and go from Core 4 to Core 5.

Continue reading Fedora Update Update (Part N)

Missing Dependencies

Latest update on the Fedora upgrade saga:

Error: missing dep: libebook.so.8 for pkg openoffice.org
Error: missing dep: libedataserver.so.3 for pkg openoffice.org
Error: missing dep: libdb_cxx-4.2.so for pkg openoffice.org-libs
Error: missing dep: /lib/security/pam_loginuid.so for pkg openssh-server
Error: missing dep: gcc for pkg gcc-g77

Why is yum telling me this? Why doesn’t it just go out get the packages and fix it?

[Update about 11:15 AM EDT]

Continue reading Missing Dependencies

Still Slogging Through Fedora Issues

OK, I’ve copied /var, but I can’t kill X so that I can unmount it–I’ve knocked off all the other processes, but gdmgreeter, etc. keep coming back like zombies.

How do I put a stake through its heart (at least long enough to umount /var), without a reboot at a lower sysinit level (because I’m still afraid to reboot given the partial update of yum)?

Fedora Partition Overcapacity Update

OK, per the suggestion in comments here, I decided to see just what it was that was filling up the /var partition. Here it is:

##########################################

[root@linux-station ~]# du -s /var/*
12 /var/account
773872 /var/cache
16 /var/crash
28 /var/db
16 /var/empty
60 /var/gdm
56716 /var/lib
8 /var/local
128 /var/lock
86208 /var/log
448 /var/lost+found
4 /var/mail
232 /var/named
8 /var/nis
8 /var/opt
8 /var/preserve
340 /var/run
72480 /var/spool
8 /var/tmp
8 /var/tux
13936 /var/www
24 /var/yp

#################################

I can live without the contents of cache, right?

Well, maybe not:

[root@linux-station ~]# du -s /var/cache/*
80 /var/cache/alchemist
472 /var/cache/gstreamer-0.8
1344 /var/cache/man
8 /var/cache/mod_proxy
8 /var/cache/mod_ssl
384 /var/cache/samba
771568 /var/cache/yum

#######################################

Note that it’s all cache/yum. Does that mean that if I blow it away, my ongoing yum upgrade gets clobbered? Getting rid of logs will help a little, but I suspect that the yum cache will quickly fill up the available space if I give it any. What now?

Fedora Update Update

So I was updating my machine, per the instructions found here, and things were going along swimmingly for a while, until I got the following stretch of error messages:

################################
Other Transactions:
Obsoleting: compat-libstdc++.i386 0:8-3.3.4.2 with compat-libstdc++-296.i386 0:2.96-132.fc4
Obsoleting: cryptsetup.i386 0:0.1-4 with cryptsetup-luks.i386 0:1.0.1-0.fc4
Obsoleting: db4.i386 0:4.2.52-6 with compat-db.i386 0:4.2.52-2.FC4
Obsoleting: db4-devel.i386 0:4.2.52-6 with compat-db.i386 0:4.2.52-2.FC4
Obsoleting: db4-utils.i386 0:4.2.52-6 with compat-db.i386 0:4.2.52-2.FC4
Obsoleting: gcc-g77.i386 0:3.4.2-6.fc3 with compat-gcc-32-g77.i386 0:3.2.3-47.fc4
Obsoleting: gcc-g77.i386 0:3.4.3-22.fc3 with compat-gcc-32-g77.i386 0:3.2.3-47.fc4
Obsoleting: httpd-suexec.i386 0:2.0.52-3 with httpd.i386 0:2.0.54-10.3
Obsoleting: httpd-suexec.i386 0:2.0.52-3.1 with httpd.i386 0:2.0.54-10.3
Obsoleting: kernel-utils.i386 1:2.4-13.1.39 with smartmontools.i386 1:5.33-1.5 Obsoleting: libf2c.i386 0:3.4.2-6.fc3 with libgfortran.i386 0:4.0.2-8.fc4
Obsoleting: libf2c.i386 0:3.4.3-22.fc3 with libgfortran.i386 0:4.0.2-8.fc4
Obsoleting: libtool-libs.i386 0:1.5.6-4 with libtool-ltdl.i386 0:1.5.16.multilib2-3
Obsoleting: libtool-libs.i386 0:1.5.6-4.FC3.2 with libtool-ltdl.i386 0:1.5.16.multilib2-3
Obsoleting: memtest86.i386 0:3.2-1.1.fc3.rf with memtest86+.i386 0:1.55.1-1
Obsoleting: nautilus-media.i386 0:0.8.1-3 with nautilus.i386 0:2.10.0-4
Obsoleting: openoffice.org.i386 0:1.1.2-10 with openoffice.org-math.i386 1:2.0.1.1-5.1
Obsoleting: openoffice.org-i18n.i386 0:1.1.2-10 with openoffice.org-langpack-sv.i386 1:2.0.1.1-5.1
Obsoleting: openoffice.org-libs.i386 0:1.1.2-10 with openoffice.org-core.i386 1:2.0.1.1-5.1
Obsoleting: pdksh.i386 0:5.2.14-30 with ksh.i386 0:20050202-1
Obsoleting: tuxracer.i386 0:0.61-28 with ppracer.i386 0:0.3.1-4.fc4.1
Obsoleting: xscreensaver.i386 1:4.18-4 with xscreensaver-base.i386 1:4.21-4

Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
libtool-ltdl-1.5.16.multi 100% |=========================| 25 kB 00:00
openoffice.org-langpack-s 100% |=========================| 13 MB 00:39
smartmontools-5.33-1.5.i3 100% |=========================| 257 kB 00:00
microcode_ctl-1.12-1.24_F 100% |=========================| 238 kB 00:01
openoffice.org-langpack-t 100% |=========================| 12 MB 00:33
openoffice.org-langpack-z 100% |=========================| 13 MB 00:38
openoffice.org-langpack-g 100% |=========================| 755 kB 00:02
openoffice.org-langpack-n 100% |=========================| 12 MB 00:33
httpd-2.0.54-10.3.i386.rp 100% |=========================| 935 kB 00:03
openoffice.org-langpack-a 100% |=========================| 4.1 MB 00:13
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/bin/yum”, line 8, in ?
yummain.main(sys.argv[1:])
File “/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py”, line 136, in main
base.doTransaction()
File “/usr/share/yum-cli/cli.py”, line 589, in doTransaction
problems = self.downloadPkgs(downloadpkgs)
File “/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/yum/__init__.py”, line 382, in downloadPkgs
mylocal = repo.get(relative=remote, local=local, checkfunc=checkfunc)
File “/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/yum/repos.py”, line 443, in get
checkfunc=checkfunc)
File “/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/urlgrabber/mirror.py”, line 414, in urlgrab
return self._mirror_try(func, url, kw)
File “/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/urlgrabber/mirror.py”, line 400, in _mirror_try
return func_ref( *(fullurl,), **kwargs )
File “/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/urlgrabber/grabber.py”, line 595, in urlgrab
return self._retry(opts, retryfunc, url, filename)
File “/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/urlgrabber/grabber.py”, line 527, in _retry
return apply(func, (opts,) + args, {})
File “/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/urlgrabber/grabber.py”, line 583, in retryfunc
fo._do_grab()[root@linux-station home]#

File “/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/urlgrabber/grabber.py”, line 852, in _do_grab
new_fo.write(block)
IOError: [Errno 28] No space left on device

#######################################

At which point it returned to the root prompt.

What now?

[Update at noon]

Oops! /var is full.

######################################

[root@linux-station home]# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda7 10412484 3489804 6393744 36% /
/dev/hda1 101086 8478 87389 9% /boot
none 257904 0 257904 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda2 100790036 44456020 51214104 47% /home
/dev/hda3 1004052 20080 932968 3% /tmp
/dev/hda5 1004024 1000672 0 100% /var
#######################################

What do I do about that? Any magic tools that can repartition a live drive?

[Update on Monday evening]

OK, I guess the question is, given that (in theory) I’ve done a partial update from Core 3 to Core 4, but it bombed out part way through, is the machine rebootable? Or do I have to figure out a way to install and run gparted under the current running shell? I don’t want to reboot into a Livedisk for repartioning, only to find out that my OS is FUBAR, even with the bigger partition, on reboot.