skipping kernel

[Felix Miata]

On 2008/03/13 08:52 (GMT-0400) Patrick Shanahan apparently typed:

> * Felix Miata <mrmazda at ij.net> [03-13-08 01:11]:

>> Is there a way to do this while upgrading everything else? Urpmi on Mandriva
>> has a config file "skip.list", which allows me to upgrade everything except
>> what's listed in that file.

> use the cl, duke  :^)

Is there some other runlevel 3 option? I typically do betaware updates like
Factory X from runlevel 3. :-)

> smart --help
> smart flag --help
> smart flag --set lock <installed kernel>
> smart download <kernel package>
>    rpm -ivh <kernel package>    ## will install alongside existing kernels

I started with the man page. Flag was just sitting there with 0 explanation
more just than sitting under the heading "Setup", while 'Run "smart command
--help" for more information' is sitting indented under the heading "Query
commands", where looks like it applies only to Query commands. Docs like that
are too obtuse to do me any good except on the best of days.

I also looked on
http://susewiki.org/index.php?title=SMART_Package_Manager
http://freshmeat.net/projects/smartpm/
http://labix.org/smart

All of which gave no apparent indication of any answer to my quest, though
the latter does have this little gem:

"Smart is still missing good documentation. We hope to provide it soon."

That's when I gave up trying to get anything from docs and asked here.

>> If that's no option, can kernels be installed instead of upgraded while
>> everything else is upgraded on SUSE?

> fourth line above

On 2008/03/13 10:25 (GMT-0300) Gustavo Niemeyer apparently typed:

>> Is there a way to do this while upgrading everything else? Urpmi on Mandriva
>> has a config file "skip.list", which allows me to upgrade everything except
>> what's listed in that file.

> As Patrick pointed out, you can lock packages in both installed and
> uninstalled state.  "Locking" means the state won't change (installed
> will stay installed, uninstalled will stay uninstalled).

> You can do that both in the command line, and in the GUI by right-clicking
> the involved package.

>> If that's no option, can kernels be installed instead of upgraded while
>> everything else is upgraded on SUSE?

> Yes, you can flag them as "multi-version".  Please check
> "smart flag --help" for more details.

It helps, but I don't see an example that really works for me. Do I flag a
complete package name, or leave off the version part? Do I need both lock and
multi-version flags set in order to have multiple kernels? Is there a plain
text config file that I can just edit instead of typing flag commands?


FWIW, with Cooker & Factory I normally like to decide when to add or remove a
kernel, but leave it up to the packaging software to decide what else to
update. With Smart on Factory, my usual procedure has been something like:

smart update (proceed only if new packages available)
visit a mirror in mc to fetch new kernel if I see one I want
(if yes) smart upgrade mkinitrd perl\* rpm y\*; rpm -ivh <new-kernel>
fix broken /boot/grub/menu.lst
reboot

Now at this point in Mandriva, I'd run urpmi --auto-select, because
/etc/urpmi/skip-list has the kernel in it, and my update would finish
updating whatever packages were on the selected mirror.

In Factory using Smart, up until now, I've usually seen no new kernel, or
proceeded to rpm install the newest one. The subject question here now arose
because I don't want 2.6.25* kernels yet.

Anyway, next step in Factory is to finish the upgrade with Smart, a bloody
nuisance compared to urpmi that usually needs baby sitting. Smart virtually
always fails to grab one or more packages out of any package list consisting
of more than just a few. So I either have to rerun several times the same
exact command until it stops missing packages that timed out, or find the
missing packages on another mirror with mc and copy them to
/var/lib/smart/packages, so that Smart can actually install any of them,
since it won't install any until they've all been somehow downloaded.

Urpmi bunches smallish related groups of packages for download and
installation, which means only those groups fail for lack of a single file
rather than 100% of the whole upgrade list. Of course, rerunning Smart means
extra waiting on recalculating the cache and recalculating the upgrade list
each rerun, even though nothing has changed since the last run.

Then there's the other babysitting problem from installing only after 100% of
the list is downloaded. I have lots of small partitions on lots of puters. I
currently have one Factory on each of 8 puters, on partitions of either 4G or
4.8G. Their freespace typically runs between about 50% & 85%. If last upgrade
has not been very recent, most to all of that gets used up on those with a
lower available freespace, so 'smart upgrade' either can't proceed due to
exhausting freespace during its 100% download first process, or when it
calculates insufficient needed freespace to apply them, apparently ignoring
that it's replacing existing rather than adding new packages and informing me
it needs massive quantities more freespace than is available for each and
every package in the list.

This babysitting entails, depending on how small freespace is after the first
try fails, something like 'smart upgrade a\*', letting that complete, then
'smart upgrade b\* c\*', then 'smart upgrade d\* e\* f\*', etc. until finally
enough packages seem to have been cleaned to do 'smart upgrade' to finish.
It's almost enough grief to make me try zypper dup instead. :-p
-- 
"Let us not love with words or in talk only.
Let us love by what we do." 1 John 3:18 NLV

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

Felix Miata  ***  http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/