8.6 upgrade problems [Resolved]

General
#8

II have been running v8.5 for some time now with no issues.

At the prompt from the system installer, I just attempt to upgrade to v8.6 using the “Update” widget in plasma. I think this is synonymous with sudo dnf update.

The update seems to have finished successfully.

I shut down, restarted, and selected the top “v8.6” from the grub list. The system starts, and I’m able to SSH into it from the outside.

Sadly, I get no plasma/UI. At the point where I usually get a password prompt, I instead have a blank black screen with a working cursor and nothing else.

I’ve restarted using the older v8.5 grub entry and it restarted as usual.

I have journalctl enabled (I’ve added journal to `/var/log’).

I’d appreciate guidance in getting plasma working in v8.6. I’m at a loss about how to identify and resolve whatever is making the updated system work.

Following the guidance from this topic, I did dnf --enablerepo=* clean all (as root) with the following result:

# dnf --enablerepo=* clean all
95 files removed
[root@tms-desktop ~]# dnf update
Rocky Linux 8 - AppStream                                                        5.6 MB/s | 7.8 MB     00:01    
Rocky Linux 8 - BaseOS                                                           2.0 MB/s | 2.6 MB     00:01    
Rocky Linux 8 - Extras                                                            24 kB/s |  11 kB     00:00    
Rocky Linux 8 - PowerTools                                                       2.0 MB/s | 2.2 MB     00:01    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64                                   886 kB/s |  11 MB     00:12    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64                           995 kB/s | 1.0 MB     00:01    
google-chrome                                                                     14 kB/s | 3.6 kB     00:00    
MySQL 8.0 Community Server                                                       6.0 MB/s | 2.3 MB     00:00    
MySQL Connectors Community                                                       266 kB/s |  74 kB     00:00    
MySQL Tools Community                                                            2.5 MB/s | 459 kB     00:00    
Oracle Linux / RHEL / CentOS-8 / x86_64 - VirtualBox                             735 kB/s | 204 kB     00:00    
Visual Studio Code                                                                20 MB/s |  25 MB     00:01    
Error: 
 Problem 1: cannot install the best update candidate for package anaconda-live-33.16.5.6-1.el8.rocky.1.x86_64
  - nothing provides anaconda-gui = 33.16.6.7-1.el8.rocky.0.3 needed by anaconda-live-33.16.6.7-1.el8.rocky.0.3.x86_64
 Problem 2: package anaconda-live-33.16.5.6-1.el8.rocky.1.x86_64 requires anaconda-gui = 33.16.5.6-1.el8.rocky.1, but none of the providers can be installed
  - cannot install both anaconda-gui-33.16.6.7-1.el8.rocky.0.4.x86_64 and anaconda-gui-33.16.5.6-1.el8.rocky.1.x86_64
  - problem with installed package anaconda-live-33.16.5.6-1.el8.rocky.1.x86_64
  - cannot install the best update candidate for package anaconda-gui-33.16.5.6-1.el8.rocky.1.x86_64
  - nothing provides anaconda-gui = 33.16.6.7-1.el8.rocky.0.3 needed by anaconda-live-33.16.6.7-1.el8.rocky.0.3.x86_64
(try to add '--allowerasing' to command line to replace conflicting packages or '--skip-broken' to skip uninstallable packages or '--nobest' to use not only best candidate packages)

I hope this is helpful – I remain stuck until I understand what these complaints mean. Like rl100, I’m just a user – I have limited insight into how to proceed.

1 Like
#9

This may have solved your issue, but perhaps you might clear the “Resolved” flag – there at least two more users that seem to have a related issue.

#10

I have exactly the same issue with failing to start Plasma desktop: instead of login prompt I get a black screen and a functioning mouse cursor. dnf update from 8.5 to 8.6 went smoothly.

Things I tried that didn’t help with the Plasma problem:

  1. Reinstalling latest nVidia binary driver (390.151) followed by dracut --force + reboot

  2. Reinstalling all Kde workspaces rpm’s

Thing that works:

Booting with the last 8.5 kernel-4.18.0-348.23.1, I am able to start Plasma normally (both with the previous-to-last and the latest nVidia drivers, both installed with the nvidia installer).

So it seems to be some quick caused by kernel-4.18.0-372.9.1 ?

Any ideas?

Edit: I am using sddm

#11

Same here! Was especially a pain cause once I successfully updated to 8.6 (sudo dnf update --allowerasing --nobest -y) I got a cursor over a black background… I had to plug my headless server back into a monitor :frowning_face: and switch back the last 8.5 kernel…

It also completely busted my redshift for maya - maxon one licence (which was very difficult to install in the first place…

Maybe the 8.6 updates are being added to the Rocky Repo one-by-one? And the Rocky update is stilll incomplete? Therefore, breaking everyone’s delicate mission-critical server situation?

Edit: I am also using sddm (maybe this is an epel-release delayed update situation? Whoever is maintaining the SDDM is the culprit (poor soul)?)

#12

For people dealing with the sddm blackout after upgrading to 8.6, a temporary (and perhaps obvious) workaround is to switch to gdm. From a console or ssh, as root:

dnf install gdm
systemctl stop display-manager
systemctl disable sddm
systemctl enable gdm
systemctl start display-manager

The disable/enable commands do the actual work, so if they succeed you can just reboot and gdm will (hopefully) come up.

Don’t forget upon the first login to click on the “gear” icon and select Plasma as the preferable desktop.

The process should be reversible once sddm (or whatever causes the problem) gets repaired…

YMMV etc.

Note: in my case gdm spends a little while after entering the password apparently doing nothing, but I guess it’s better than staring into a black screen with a pointer :wink:

#13

"and perhaps obvious* :rofl:
Ouch! No, not to me. I also chose sddm for its lightweight versatility (and cause lxdm is borking on boot lately)
I am running an animation studio, and sddm is what works most stable for us when animating/rendering.
I think its super inconvenient to have to switch something as fundamental as your chosen display manager.

#14

There at least were some issues with KDE/sddm that EPEL maintainers were working on:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/epel-devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/ENI3SYPO7NOVTVDE6FTXB6I5PBOSFQ7D/

3 Likes
#15

So it appears it is indeed an upstream 8.6 kernel bug that affects both sddm and kscreenlocker:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2043771
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2082719

It’s currently unknown when it will be fixed and unfortunately the relevant tracker bug is private.

8.6 upgrade problems (still not resolved)
#16

Is there some way to adjust the process so that updates like this are not pushed through the dnf repos until they are “mature”?

At the moment, I’m not sure what state my system is in. I had to revert to an earlier grub entry (I don’t even know what vocabulary to use!) to make it work at all. I’m afraid to do another yum update because the last time I tried it, I got the above error complaints.

I’m migrating my world to Rocky Linux system by system (away from CentOS 7 and Windows 10 Pro). That makes me increasingly vulnerable to issues like this.

I’m ok with simply waiting a few days, but I wonder if there’s some way to improve the release process so that I don’t have to worry about a bug like this knocking me entirely off the grid.

#17

Too many chefs on the soup.

What Rocky Linux has in its repositories is consistent, as “mature” as possible from the sources of RHEL. It is very rare that RHEL or rebuild has major regressions. The same was/is with CentOS 7.

It is the content that you insist on getting from third party repositories that does not always sync with the distro. The third-party repositories do build to the best of their ability, but it definitely is not the responsibility of the distro (RHEL, CentOS, Rocky) to wait until someone somewhere that almost nobody knows about has updated and tested their package to be compatible, particularly when that somebody cannot build nor test before they have the new Rocky to work on.

That boils down to you knowing what you have and keeping taps on (and possibly inspiring the third-party maintainers) until “all the pieces” are safe for you.

1 Like
#18

Let me try using different language.

I’m still unsure what has broken on my system. I have a reasonably vanilla desktop – KDE/Plasma. So far as I can tell, the issue on my system is with KDE/Plasma.

If my use of KDE/Plasma makes me “someone somewhere that almost nobody knows about”, then it leads me to question whether Rocky Linux is the right choice for me. While I do use a large number of headless systems on AWS/EC2, and even here on my home network, I do still want a desktop on the machine I use all day every day.

Is Gnome a better choice? I thought I was choosing mainstream-vanilla when I chose KDE/Plasma. Is there a way to migrate from KDE/Plasma to Gnome without rebuilding the world from bits?

That boils down to you knowing what you have and keeping taps on (and possibly inspiring the third-party maintainers) until “all the pieces” are safe for you.

Blaming the user/customer is not the most effective way to either build a community or solve a problem. I have KDE/Plasma. KDE/Plasma is – I thought – a mainstream choice of desktop. I have the perhaps unreasonable expectation that I should be able to run “dnf update” without fear of a black screen being the result.

I will happily pay a reasonable price for some entity to manage this for me – I thought that such a package was in the works for Rocky Linux. In the meantime, do you have any constructive suggestions for how I proceed?

For example, is Gnome a more mainstream choice? Is there a deterministic way to migrate from KDE/Plasma to Gnome?

I just want this work, I don’t want to argue about it. I’ve been a professional software developer since 1982 – I understand that bugs happen, and they don’t provoke angst or drama in me.

I just want my system to work when I turn it on.

#19

KDE/Plasma is not vanilla because it’s not included in RHEL, and therefore not included in Rocky. A vanilla system is installing Rocky with the desktop that it comes with by default - which is Gnome. If you install an additional desktop GUI like KDE, or Cinnamon or something else then this is not the fault of Rocky Linux. As @jlehtone said, and what I’ve also said in another thread as well - if you see such conflicts when attempting to update the best thing to do is wait. Wait until the third party repos like where you are installing KDE from fix the issues, so that when you do in a few days time run the update command again - chances are it will work. I have Cinnamon in my installation, and if it breaks, then it is my fault for installing it, instead of using the default Gnome desktop.

If you installed a desktop that is by default in Rocky and it doesn’t work for you, then it is Rocky that needs to sort it out. If you install a desktop like KDE from wherever you installed it from and it doesn’t work, then ideally you need to be asking them or saying why this doesn’t work, and providing the info. Rocky cannot solve it for you, because it’s not software that they developed. Basically if you see problems when doing an update, don’t do it!

Also, using things like --allowerasing I don’t recommend using. Especially if the output from the command on what it is going to do next isn’t completely read and understood clearly, since this command is going to potentially remove packages from your system and in some cases has meant people lost their desktop completely, with black screens or whatever. If in doubt about the output on what it’s going to do, best not do it.

Best to use a vanilla system and not customise it using third-party repositories unless you are willing to tinker and fix problems when they occur. I don’t like Gnome, so I’ve always tended to go for systems that have Cinnamon by default because I like that. So Linux Mint in some respects. If you like KDE, then Kubuntu unless you don’t like that kind of system. SUSE/OpenSUSE includes KDE by default from what I remember as well.

It should be said, playing with and customising a system takes it outside of the boundaries that it was meant to be in. At this point, the responsibility for that lies with the person who made those changes to the system. In this instance, with Rocky+Cinnamon I’m the person who made it a different system, I customised it, therefore the only person I can blame when it goes wrong is me. It applies when adding KDE to a system when it’s not there by default.

Third-party repositories cannot be blamed if their packages mess up your system either. They make them and they try their best to ensure it works. It most cases it will work, when it doesn’t, then that’s too bad, it happens. You either use it or you don’t. They didn’t force it on you to use.

1 Like
#20

I hear you.

I think it’s time I finish the job of migrating from KDE/Plasma back to Gnome. I attempted this last November (see my earlier thread), and hit some repo issues at that time.

I apologize for sounding cranky.

My first order of business is to get a reasonable backup, which means (I think) either getting nfs to work from a local fileserver or getting an external volume mounted (through USB3.1). I suspect/hope that rsync is good enough for that.

1 Like
#21

No need to apologise :slight_smile: I used to use Mandrake/Mandriva back in the day, so somewhere around 2005 - 2007 and I used to or rather attempt to use some third-party repos to get the latest and greatest KDE than what was included with the distro. If you have the patience for it, it’s fine. I was new to Linux back then, so a newbie, lack of knowledge. Things were more problematic back then. Cut a long story short, I ditched the third-party repos and just lived with what was there. I only play around if I know I can fix it :slight_smile: otherwise I just keep it simple.

#22

I am the original poster of this Topic.

@SomervilleTom

This may have solved your issue, but perhaps you might clear the “Resolved” flag – there at least two more users that seem to have a related issue.

I thought about that, and I am not going to do that for the following reasons:

  1. My issue as I posted was actually resolved by the solution I posted. So I think the Resolved tag is accurate and appropriate.

  2. There are no moderators or I believe forum codes of conduct for this forum (and that is fine), but if you look at major forums such as Wordpress, there is a rule that says that if a person has a similar issue to one that is posted by someone else, that person should start their own separate issue and not add to an existing one. For reasons explained below.

  3. The similarity between my issue and your issue is the symptom (Problems reported) but the causes are different and so is the solution. If you had the same cause as me, then the same solution would have worked. This is another good reason to post your own issue.

  4. Adding to my post (as some others have done as well) makes for a “soup” of individual posts with different causes, trouble shooting and possible solutions.

@SomervilleTom

Is Gnome a better choice? I thought I was choosing mainstream-vanilla when I chose KDE/Plasma. Is there a way to migrate from KDE/Plasma to Gnome without rebuilding the world from bits?

Yes, absolutely Gnome is a better choice since it is supported and incorporated into RHEL and hence Rocky. Using other desktops can lead to the issues you are having.

I learned the hard way many years ago, when I was using Fedora, an upstream of RHEL and hence Rocky, to not install a 3rd party desktop environment, like KDE.

One key Gnome extension that you may find helpful is Dash to Panel. It converts Gnome to more of a windows or KDE style where there is a bar at bottom of screen
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1160/dash-to-panel/

@SomervilleTom

Blaming the user/customer is not the most effective way to either build a community or solve a problem.

I don’t see anyone blaming you for anything. And the people trying to help you out on here, are some of the most helpful people I have met on any forum, they have helped me often and much. And I believe that Rocky Linux, the OS and the community and the forum are already a well developed and strong, helpful community.

@SomervilleTom

For example, is Gnome a more mainstream choice?

If you look into Gnome, such as:

You will see:
GNOME is the default desktop environment on many major Linux distributions including Debian, Endless OS, Fedora Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Ubuntu, and Tails; as well as Solaris, a Unix operating system.

@SomervilleTom

Is there a deterministic way to migrate from KDE/Plasma to Gnome?

I am not sure if you are aware, but Gnome comes as the default DE with the full DVD ISO of Rocky. I wonder if maybe you installed KDE because you used the minimal version of Rocky which may not come with a DE.

During install of the full ISO you can choose the Workstation option which will install Gnome.

Since the install takes maybe 20 minutes, if I was in your situation, I would back up my data and reinstall Rocky in this way. Very deterministic and probably quicker and less frustrating than trying to move to Gnome on an existing install. Hope that helps.

@SomervilleTom

I just want this work, I don’t want to argue about it. I’ve been a professional software developer since 1982 – I understand that bugs happen, and they don’t provoke angst or drama in me.

I dont see anyone arguing with you.

Based one eg your questions about Gnome being mainstream, maybe you are fairly new to Linux and the problems you are having are due to your inexperience.

I just want my system to work when I turn it on.

So does everyone :slight_smile: I have been using Rocky since its inception, as my main home OS and it works every time I turn it on, several times a day.

2 Likes
#23

I appreciate your comment.

I’m not new to linux or to Rocky Linux. More than anything else, I’m cranky because I have several other projects that I’m forced to defer work on until I get my main machine stabilized.

I suspect that my issues are mostly a result of trying to keep up with a multitude of moving parts (including the non-trivial question of how to get a reasonable backup done). I agree that my decision to install KDE/Plasma last fall was a mistake.

I have an older hardware system, I think I may use it as a sandbox. I’ll just take my time and stay with it until I get my world stabilized again.

#24

@SomervilleTom
Ok, I hope you get things resolved quickly and can be productive again :slight_smile:

#25

> No need to apologise :slight_smile: I used to use Mandrake/Mandriva back in the day,

:smile: You too?? :smile:

1 Like
#26

Hmmm… Funny… I administer 3 servers running Rocky. I have installed and set-up the “dnf-automatic” service. I got an email from each server notifying me of the applied updates, I rebooted each (as I do anytime the Kernel gets updated), and they came back up in v. 8.6, no issues at all…

#27

Kernel is not the only package that makes a reboot preferable. See