Can't add urpmi channel in Mandriva 2010.1 with Smart 1.3.1 or 1.4, AND >98% CPU load

[David]

On 16/11/10 06:03, Steve Morris wrote:
> On 15/11/10 13:12, David wrote:
>>
>> On 15/11/10 07:25, Steve Morris wrote:
>>> On 12/11/10 13:15, David wrote:
>>>>    Anders, thanks for the quick response.
>>>>
>>>> On 11/11/10 23:45, Anders F Björklund wrote:
>>>>> 11 nov 2010 kl. 13.57 skrev David:
>>>>>
>>>>>> With a fresh installation of Smart, either 1.3.1 or 1.4 (Mandriva
>>>>>> builds), when trying to add an urpmi channel it fails with the
>>>>>> message: "Base URL (baseurl) and Mirror List URL (mirrorurl) cannot
>>>>>> both be specified as fields for 'urpmi' channels," however I have
>>>>>> only entered information into "Base URL" and "Header List URL"
>>>>>> nothing into "Mirror List URL."
>>>>> Did you try the smart "mandriva" branches (from trunk) too ?
>>>>>
>>>>> https://code.launchpad.net/~afb/smart/mandriva
>>>>> https://code.launchpad.net/~afb/smart/urpmisync
>>>>>
>>>>> That is where I tried to merge things from the mandriva fork.
>>>> I will look at this in the next few days and let you know.
>>> I have previously tried these branches and the first one had the same
>>> problem as the native Mandriva 1.3.1 which if I remember correctly was
>>> an xml failure (I think it complained the compressed xml file was not
>>> valid), and the 2nd, as I have already reported, in my view was
>>> horrendous. When doing a channel sync it downloaded the synthesis file
>>> for every mirror specified in the mirror list and displayed its progress
>>> bar at well past 100%.
>> Thanks for the info Steve. Anders, could you comment before I put time
>> to this that will likely yield the same result? Perhaps instead you
>> could let me have a patch that would disable this xml error checking
>> so I can verify if the problem just seems to be faulty error checking,
>> which I suspect
> If I remember correctly it was names.xml.gz that was getting the invalid
> xml file failure, but when I sent Anders a sample of the xml (I couldn't
> send the complete file because my mail system couldn't handle the
> attachment size) he confirmed that the xml supplied was valid. I was
> getting this error at the beginning of the cache load which would then
> cause smart to shutdown.
That's the exact same symptoms I had. I'm presuming (maybe dangerous) 
the xml is valid because Mandriva's software management package doesn't 
fail. The other thing that seems a bit odd, if you disable mirror media 
one by one using Mandriva's Configure Media Sources package, usually 
only one media source is causing the issue which can be worked around by 
re-adding the same media from a different mirror. If you do that, Smart 
works for a while (days) before the same issue crops up again.
> The other thing I should also mention is that the urpmisync branch does
> not appear to get the xml failure before it gets the mirror sync issue.
What's then sync issue - don't recall that happening?
>>> As a side issue, where did you get the Mandriva build of 1.4 for 2010.1
>>> from? The Australian mirror I am using only has 1.3.1 for both the 64
>>> bit and 32 versions.
>> Steve, smart 1.4 is on cooker here:
>> http://mirror.internode.on.net/pub/mandriva/devel/cooker/i586/media/contrib/release/
>>
> Thankyou. I didn't think  about the cooker environment. Did you run into
> dependency issue with installing it under 2010.1 or are you using cooker
> as well?
I'm not using cooker, it works with 2010.1 but with the lack of progress 
indicator issues I mentioned, which also happens on Fedora 13.

cheers, David
> regards,
> Steve
>
>> note though that the same issues seem to plague 1.4, plus a lack of
>> progress indication - this is not just a Mandriva issue - except for
>> the xml error which seems to be Mandriva specific
>>> regards,
>>> Steve
>>>
>>>>>> Has anyone seen this problem and has a solution? Perhaps it only
>>>>>> occurs on Mandriva 2010.1 using Mandriva builds of Smart? Could it
>>>>>> be since Mandriva have started linking Smart to their own mirror
>>>>>> lists?
>>>>>> I have deleted both /var/lib/smart and /usr/lib/smart and retried
>>>>>> with freshly initialised configuration, but have same problem.
>>>>> Not sure how those mirror lists work, so you would need examples.
>>>> I'm not either, I need to investigate further, it's a very useful
>>>> feature
>>>>>> Please note however that there are also other issues that now make
>>>>>> Smart (1.4 at least) virtually unusable (on Fedora 13 too),
>>>>>> being>98% cpu utilisation during channel refresh or package
>>>>>> download, and no progress indication whatever, as if the Smart
>>>>>> package has crashed but it hasn't; if one waits long enough task
>>>>>> completes, only visual feedback is broken. This affects both i586
>>>>>> and 64 bit systems.
>>>>> Sounds like glib bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/smart/+bug/592503
>>>>>
>>>>> Does it work OK from console ? In Qt ? With the workaround branch ?
>>>> I will try the workaround and get back to you. It's probably worth
>>>> mentioning that the visual feedback in Smart has always intermittently
>>>> failed to operate, all previous versions of Smart, Mandriva and Fedora
>>>> back for a few years. Previous failure mode was not so serious in that
>>>> dialog came up but bar never appeared, or sometimes bar appeared
>>>> momentarily as a flash on 100%, sometimes bar operated normally,
>>>> progressively. This has never been an issue with any other gtk apps
>>>> I've used, could it be that either python or smart are calling the
>>>> supporting libraries in an unintended way for this feedback dialog?
>>>>>> Note that Smart does work on Mandriva 2010.1 if using the Mandriva
>>>>>> supplied init script for Smart which links Smart to Mandriva's auto
>>>>>> mirror list - HOWEVER - Smart always crashes on startup until
>>>>>> reconfiguring the Mandriva channels manually. In a day or two, it's
>>>>>> necessary to reconfigure the channels manually again otherwise Smart
>>>>>> again crashes on startup. The error message escapes me right now but
>>>>>> Smart seems to think one or more channels is corrupt (they're not
>>>>>> because they still work in Mandriva's package manager).
>>>>> Hard to know, since they are using their own version of Smart...
>>>> I had a brief look at the branches you'd like to merge above, it
>>>> triggered my memory, this is I think an xml error, perhaps related to
>>>> the xml changes in one of these branches - I'm going to try each
>>>> branch as soon as I can and get back to you. I will also set Smart up
>>>> again as Mandriva ship, so that we can get the exact error.
>>>>>> I have been using Smart for about 5 years now in preference to the
>>>>>> Mandriva supplied package manager and this is the first time I have
>>>>>> had issues trying to configure channels or anything else. Thanks
>>>>>> Gustavo and others who have given us Smart, for (normally) a
>>>>>> great     package manager.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If I can be of any help in sorting out these issues by providing
>>>>>> feedback on any bugfix patches on either Mandriva or Fedora, please
>>>>>> let me know. Smart is a great program and I'd love to have it
>>>>>> working well again as soon as possible.
>>>>> If those branches above help, the idea is for them to be merged.
>>>>>
>>>>> --anders
>>>> David
>>>>
>>>>